UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 
AT  LOS  ANGELES 

BROWSING  ROOM 


THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


Anna  E.  ^umtif  r 


A  New  Mind  For  the  New  Age 


THE  COLE  LECTURES 

The  Productive  Beliefs  -     -     -     - 

(  '9^9  ) 

By  Lynn  H.  Hough,  D.D. 

Old  Truths  and  New  Facts     -     - 

(  '9'S ) 

By  Charles  E.  Jefferson,  D.D. 

The  North  American  Idea  -     -     - 

(  '9^7  ) 

By  James  A.  Macdonald,  LL.  D. 

The    Foundation    of    Modern 

Religion       -------- 

(  '9'^  ) 

By  Herbert  li.  Workman,  D.  D. 

Winning  the  World  for  Christ   - 

(  '9^5  ) 

By  Uishop  Walter  R.  Lambuth. 

Personal  Christianity     -     -     -     - 

(  '9^4  ) 

By  Bishop  Francis  J.  McConnell. 

The  God  We  Trust  -     -     -     -     - 

(  '9'S  ) 

Hy  G.  A.  Johnston  Robs. 

What  Does  Christianity  Mean  ?  - 

(  '9'^  ) 

By  W.  H.  P.  Faunce. 

Some  Great  Leaders  in  the 

World  Movement 

(  '9"  ) 

By  Robert  E.  Speer. 

In  the  School  of  Christ  -     -     - 

(  '9'o  ) 

By  Bishop  William  Fraser  McDowell. 

Jesus  the  Worker     -     -     -     .     - 

(  '909  ) 

By  Charles  McTyeire  Bishop,  D.  D. 

The  Fact  of  Conversion     -     -     - 

(  '908  ) 

By  George  Jackson,  B.  A. 

God's  Message  to  the  Human  Soul 

(  '907 ) 

By  John   Watson   (Ian  Maclaren). 

Christ  and  Science 

(  '906 ) 

By  Francis  Henry  Smith. 

The   Universal    Elements  of  the 

Christian  Religion 

(  '90s  ) 

By  Charles  Cuthbert  Hall. 

The  Religion  of  the  Incarnation  - 

(  '90s  ) 

By  Bishop  Eugene  Russell  Hendrix. 

The    Cole   Lectures  for   ig20 
deli-vered  before  Vanderbilt  Uni-versity 


A  New  Mind  For 

the  New  Age 


By 

HENRY  CHURCHILL  KING,  D.D.,  LL.D. 

Presideut  of  Oberlin  College 


New    York  Chicago 

Fleming     H.      Revell     Company 

London  and  E  d i n  h  u  k  g  m 


Copyright,  1920,  by 
FLEMING  H.  REVELL  COMPANY 


New  York :  1 58  Fifth  Avenue 
Chicago :  1 7  North  Wabash  Ave. 
London:  21  Paternoster  Square 
Edinburgh  :       75     Princes     Street 


THE  COLE  LECTURES 

THE  late  Colonel  E.  W.  Cole  of  Nashville,  Ten- 
nessee,  donated  to  Vanderbilt  University  the  sum 
of  five  thousand  dollars,  afterwards  increased  by 
Mrs.  E.  W.  Cole  to  ten  thousand,  the  design  and  con- 
ditions of  which  gift  are  stated  as  follows  : 

"  The  object  of  this  fund  is  to  establish  a  foundation 
for  a  perpetual  Lectureship  in  connection  with  the 
School  of  Religion  of  the  University,  to  be  restricted  in 
its  scope  to  a  defense  and  advocacy  of  the  Christian  re- 
ligion. The  lectures  shall  be  delivered  at  such  inter- 
vals, from  time  to  time,  as  shall  be  deemed  best  by  the 
Board  of  Trust ;  and  the  particular  theme  and  lecturer 
will  be  determined  by  the  Theological  Faculty.  Said 
lecture  shall  always  be  reduced  to  writing  in  full,  and 
the  manuscript  of  the  same  shall  be  the  property  of 
the  University,  to  be  published  or  disposed  of  by  the 
Board  of  Trust  at  its  discretion,  the  net  proceeds  arising 
therefrom  to  be  added  to  the  foundation  fund,  or 
otherwise  used  for  the  benefit  of  the  School  of  Re- 
ligion." 


2liHrA)7 


Preface 

THE  Cole  Lectureship  calls  for  six  lec- 
tures. To  this  extent  the  form  of 
the  material  of  this  book  is  deter- 
mined by  the  Lectureship;  for  the  discussion 
falls  into  six  corresponding  chapters.  Three 
chapters  deal,  it  will  be  seen,  with  the  New 
Age;  its  Evidence;  its  Perils;  its  Values.  The 
three  other  chapters  deal  with  the  New  Mind 
needed  for  the  New  Age;  the  Political,  Eco- 
nomic, and  Social  Challenge;  the  Educational 
Challenge ;  the  Moral  and  Religious  Challenge. 
It  is  obvious  that  this  wide  range  of  discussion 
can  be  covered  only  suggestively  within  the 
limits  of  the  Lectureship,  not  exhaustively. 

I  have  not  hesitated  to  use  in  this  book  much 
of  the  material  of  the  little  book — For  a  New 
America  in  a  Nezv  World — written  for  the 
soldiers  overseas ;  since  that  was  prepared  only 
for  private  distribution  among  some  of  the 
returning  soldiers,  and  was  not  published  for 
the  general  public  either  there  or  in  America, 
and  has  never  been  reprinted  in  America. 
Such  material  as  has  been  used,  is  wrought,  of 
7 


8  PREFACE 

course,   into  the  connected   argument  of   the 
present  discussion. 

One  hesitates  to  add  to  the  number  of  books 
concerning  the  present  critical  times,  but  the 
Cole  Lectureship  requires  publication,  and  one 
may  hope  that  any  honest  attempt  at  interpre- 
tation of  these  difficult  days  may  not  be  wholly 
without  significance. 

H.  C.  K. 

Oherlin  College. 


Contents 

LECTURE  I 

The  New  Age:  Its  Evidence  .         .       ii 

I.   Critical  Points  in  Evolution, 
II.  Disillusionment    and  Reaction  Part  of  the 
Crisis, 

III,  No  Ordinary  War. 

IV.  The  Changing  World-Order, 

V.  The  Significance  of  These  After-the-War 
Days. 

LECTURE  II 

The  New  Age  :  Its  Perils       ...       37 
I.  The   Perils   of  Inevitable  Inheritance  from 
the  War. 
II.  The  Perils  of  Disillusionment. 

III.  The  Perils  of  Reaction. 

IV.  The  Perils  of  Revolution. 

LECTURE  III 

The  New  Age  :  Its  Values  .        .63 

I.  The  Values  Involved  in  the  Characteristics 
of  the  Present  World-Order. 
II.   The  Help  of  the  Moral  Demonstrations  of 
,  the  War. 

III.      The    Greatest    Ideal  Achievements  of  the 
War, 

9 


lO  CONTENTS 

LECTURE  IV 

The  New  Mind  :  The  Political  and  So- 
cial Challenge  ....     105 
I.   General  Introduction. 

II.  Defeating  the  Perils  of  the  New  Age, 

III.   Preserving  and   Fulfilling  the  Values  of  the 
New  Age. 

LECTURE  V 

The  New  Mind:  The  Educational  Chal- 
lenge          133 

I.   The  Power  of  Education. 
II.   The  Value  of  Education. 

III.  The  Comparative  Failure  of  Our  Educa- 

tion on  the  Ideal  Side. 

IV.  The  End  of  Education. 
V.   The  Spirit  of  Education. 

VI.   The  Method  of  Education. 
VII.   Other  Needed  Emphases  in  Education. 

LECTURE   VI 

The  New  Mind  :  The  Moral  and  Relig- 
ious Challenge  .         .         .         .167 
I.   Grounds  of  Faith  and  Hope. 
II.  The  Basic  Reality  of  Morals  and  Religion. 

III.  The  Inescapable  Christ. 

IV.  A  Definitely  Christian  World-Civilization. 


LECTURE  1 
THE  NEW  AGE  :  ITS  EVIDENCE 


LECTURE  I 

THE  NEW  AGE:  ITS  EVIDENCE 

SOME  such  theme  as  I  have  chosen  for 
these  lectures — A  New  Mind  for  the 
New  Age — seems  well-nigh  unavoid- 
able. It  is  fairly  thrust  upon  one  by  the  criti- 
cal conditions  of  the  time,  as  a  problem  that 
will  not  down.  All  thoughtful  men,  indeed, 
are  so  inevitably  turning  these  questions  over 
in  their  minds,  that  one  may  hope  in  unusual 
degree  for  that  quick  interplay  of  thought  that 
keeps  a  discussion  even  of  familiar  themes 
stimulating  and  vital. 

Each  one  of  us,  moreover,  is  a  factor  in  the 
problem  we  are  to  discuss,  and  In  its  solution. 
It  concerns  us  mightily.  No  merely  academic 
consideration,  therefore,  to  which  one  might 
be  moved  by  simple  intellectual  curiosity  will 
suffice.     For,  as  Professor  Giddings  says: 

A  powerful  barbarism  is  an  appalling  menace ; 
but  it  is  not  the  supreme  menace  that  threatens 
civilization  at  this  hour.  The  supreme  menace 
is  the  indifferentism,  the  negligence,  and  the  pro- 
crastination, the  paralysis  of  will  that  seems  to  be 
13 


14  THE  NEW  AGE 

alTecting  the   civilized  minority   of   the   world's 
population. 

The  imperative  need,  that  is,  in  our  time  as 
at  the  Christian  era,  is  for  a  new  mind.  For 
the  ringing  call  both  of  John  the  Baptist  and  of 
Christ  was:  Repent, — Change  your  minds, 
Get  a  new  mind.  And  that  new  mind,  we  may 
be  sure,  will  still  include  that  utter  truth  to  the 
trust  of  one's  own  individuality,  and  that  will- 
ingness to  take  one's  full  share  in  the  hard  and 
disagreeable  tasks  in  the  world,  which  chal- 
lenge us  again  out  of  that  far-away  time: 
"  Stir  into  flame  the  gift  of  God,  which  is  in 
thee ;  "  "  Take  thy  part  in  suffering  hard- 
ship." This  threefold  individual  challenge,  at 
least,  our  theme  contains  from  the  start. 

That  the  theme  contains  a  like  manifold 
challenge  to  classes  and  parties  and  churches 
and  nations  and  races — for  the  restoration  and 
creation  of  good-will  and  trust,  for  the  full 
preservation  and  achievement  of  freedom,  for 
a  truer  and  more  thoroughgoing  democracy, 
for  international  relations  that  are  not  blind  to 
the  solidarity  of  the  world,  for  a  deeper  and 
more  penetrating  spirituality — is  hardly  less 
plain.  No  study  of  world  reconstruction  can 
well  help  having  its  political,  industrial,  social, 
educational,  moral,  religious,  and  missionary 


ITS   EVIDENCE  15 

applications.  But  perhaps  they  may  all  be 
grouped  under  the  three  general  aspects, — po- 
litical, economic,  and  social;  educational;  and 
moral  and  religious. 

We  are  to  think,  then,  of  the  New  Age — its 
evidence,  its  perils,  and  its  values;  and  of  the 
New  Mind  needed  for  that  age — the  political, 
economic,  and  social  challenge ;  the  educational 
challenge;  and  the  moral  and  religious  chal- 
lenge. 

But  have  we  any  right  to  speak  of  a  "  new 
age  "  ?  Can  we  say  that  we  have  passed  into 
a  new  age,  whether  for  better  or  for  worse? 
What  is  the  evidence  of  a  distinct  change  in  the 
world-order,  of  a  crisis  in  history,  of  a  revolu- 
tion? Is  there  in  our  time  anything  corre- 
sponding to  the  crisis  at  the  Christian  era,  for 
example,  or  at  the  Renaissance,  and  the  Refor- 
mation, or  at  the  French  Revolution?  Many 
men  have  been  thinking  of  world  reconstruc- 
tion.    Is  it  more  than  a  vain  dream? 

I 

Critical  Points  in  Evolution 
To  these  questions  It  may  be  said,  in  the 
first  place,  that  it  is  true,  no  doubt,  that  we  are 
not  to  look  for  an  absolute  break  in  cause  and 
effect  relations  in  any  crisis  in  history,  however 
marked  or  disturbing.     There  is  a  continuous 


l6  THE  NEW  AGE 

evolution  that  can  be  more  or  less  definitely 
traced.  But  this  is  not  to  say  that  evolution 
must  be  uniform,  with  no  critical  points  or 
periods ;  or  that  human  history  knows  no  crises 
that  are  unmistakable.  No  dogmatic  theory 
of  evolution  can  dictate  the  facts. 

II 

Disillusionment  and  Reaction  Part  of  the 
Crisis 

But  even  if  the  possibility  of  outstanding 
crises  and  revolutions  in  human  history  is  fully 
recognized,  do  not  the  disillusionment  and  re- 
action that  have  set  in  since  the  war,  already 
evince  that  there  was  none  too  much  difference 
among  the  Powers  in  war  aims,  and  that  we 
are  living  in  the  "  same  old  world,"  from 
which  we  may  expect  no  great  advances  or 
even  changes? 

The  reality  of  that  disillusionment  and  reac- 
tion it  is  certainly  impossible  to  question.  Let 
one  recall,  for  example,  the  solemn  statement 
of  our  aims  by  President  Wilson  at  America's 
declaration  of  war,  and  see  how  far  we  are,  in 
spite  of  an  Allied  military  victory  over  Ger- 
many, from  a  fulfillment  of  those  aims; 

There  are,  it  may  be,  many  months  of  fiery 
trial  and  sacrifice  ahead  of  us.  It  is  a  fearful 
thing  to  lead  this  great  peaceful  people  into  war. 


ITS   EVIDENCE  1 7 

into  the  most  terrible  and  disastrous  of  all  wars, 
civilization  itself  seeming  to  be  in  the  balance. 
But  the  right  is  more  precious  than  peace,  and 
we  shall  fight  for  the  things  which  we  have  al- 
ways carried  nearest  our  hearts — for  democracy, 
for  the  right  of  those  who  submit  to  authority  to 
have  a  voice  in  their  own  governments,  for  the 
rights  and  liberties  of  small  nations,  for  a  uni- 
versal dominion  of  right  by  such  a  concert  of 
free  peoples  as  shall  bring  peace  and  safety  to  all 
nations  and  make  the  world  itself  at  last  free. 
To  such  a  task  we  can  dedicate  our  lives  and  our 
fortunes,  everything  that  we  are  and  everything 
that  we  have,  with  the  pride  of  those  who  know 
that  the  day  has  come  when  America  is  privi- 
leged to  spend  her  blood  and  her  might  for  the 
principles  that  gave  her  birth  and  happiness  and 
the  peace  which  she  has  treasured.  God  helping 
her,  she  can  do  no  other. 

It  was  of  these  sentences  that  the  London 
Evening  Star  wrote : 

We  are  not  ashamed  to  say  that  these  words 
are  destined  to  echo  through  the  ages  and  to  be 
read  by  free  men  with  grateful  hearts.  They 
fill  our  eyes  with  tears  of  pride  and  grati- 
tude. .  .  .  Here  and  now  the  future  of  hu- 
manity is  being  shaped  and  moulded  for  all  time. 

That  was  then  our  hope  and  faith.  Can  we 
hold  them  still? 

We  shall  have  to  face  with  some  definiteness 


l8  THE   NEW  AGE 

of  detail  this  general  disillusionment  and  reac- 
tion which  have  set  in,  when  we  consider  the 
perils  of  our  age.  Here  it  concerns  us  clearly 
to  see  that  the  wide-spread  disillusionment  and 
reaction,  following  upon  so  stupendous  a  war, 
and  sapping  our  energies  and  our  moral  ambi- 
tions, are  themselves  a  part  of  the  desperate- 
ness  of  our  need — a  part  of  the  evidence  of  the 
crisis  of  the  new  age,  in  which  humanity  finds 
itself  now  involved. 

Ill 

No  Ordinary  War 

This  general  reaction,  moreover,  and  the 
sickening  spectacle  of  the  renewal  of  the  old 
selfish  scramble  among  the  nations,  tend  to  call 
hi  question  the  significance  of  the  zvhole  zvar. 
And  this  tendency  is  strengthened  by  a  careless 
and  undiscriminating  good-nature,  that  cares 
little  for  ideals,  and  that,  on  the  easy-going 
policy  of  letting  bygones  be  bygones,  would 
throw  away  all  the  lessons  of  the  war.  Even 
a  fine  and  honest  desire  to  show  a  spirit  of 
Christlike  forgiveness  —  always  to  be  de- 
manded— may  be  unconsciously  bent  to  a  like 
purpose. 

Now  one  would  be  glad,  in  a  discussion  like 
this,  if  he  could  be  justified  in  leaving  the  war 
and  its  issues  altosfether  behind  him.     But  the 


ITS   EVIDENCE  I9 

Christian  civilization  of  the  world  came  quite 
too  near  to  utter  collapse  in  this  war  to  war- 
rant such  a  course.  We  have  no  right  to  for- 
get the  lessons  of  the  war,  if  we  are  to  under- 
stand at  all  this  new  age,  and  its  imperative 
tasks.  For  it  is  just  because  this  war  was  no 
ordinary  zvar,  that  the  human  race  now  stands 
at  perhaps  the  greatest  crisis  in  its  history. 

Not,  then,  to  stir  hatred  and  bad  blood,  or 
to  keep  alive  the  antagonisms  of  the  war,  but 
honestly  to  face  essential  issues,  we  need 
straightly  to  see  what  made  this  war  so  terrible 
and  so  fateful. 

1.  Its  length,  the  unexampled  extent  to 
which  it  engulfed  the  world,  and  its  desperate 
intensity,  were  all  signs  of  its  extraordinary 
significance.  But  the  secret  of  its  terror  does 
not  lie  in  any  of  these  outward  characteristics. 

2.  We  come  a  little  nearer  to  its  deeper 
meaning,  when  we  remember  that  one  thing 
which  made  this  war  the  most  terrible  of  wars 
was  because  all  the  resources  of  modern  science 
zvere  laid  under  tribute  for  destructive  pur- 
poses, until  the  world  stood  aghast;  so  that 
Saloman  Reinach,  anticipating  the  Peace  Con- 
ference, was  driven  to  say: 

At  the  future  Congress,  among  the  seats  re- 
served for  the  delegates  of  the  great  Powers,  one 
seat  should  remain  vacant,  as   reserved  to  the 


20  THE   NEW  AGE 

greatest,  the  most  redoubtable,  though  youngest 
of  Powers:  science  in  scarlet  robes.  That  is  the 
new  fact ;  that  is  what  diplomacy  should  not  ig- 
nore; if  that  imminent  and  execrable  scandal  is 
to  be  averted — the  whole  of  civilization  falling  a 
victim  to  science,  her  dearest  daughter,  brought 
forth  and  nurtured  by  her,  now  ready  to  deal  her 
the  death-blow.  The  all-important  question  is 
the  muzzling  of  the  mad  dog.  Science,  as  sub- 
servient to  the  will  to  destroy,  must  be  put  in 
chains ;  science  must  be  exclusively  adapted  to 
the  works  of  peace. 

To  like  effect,  in  recent  weeks.  Professor 
Giddings  has  written: 

More  than  half  of  the  population  of  the  world 
is  still  barbaric  in  feeling  and  in  purpose.  It  has 
not  become  humane  or  peace  loving.  .  .  . 
Into  the  hands  of  barbarians  science  has 
placed  weapons  of  terrible  effectiveness:  arts  of 
military  organization  and  maneuver,  explosives 
of  terrific  force,  deadly  gases,  aeroplanes  and 
submarines.  Barbarism  is  equipped,  or  soon  will 
be  equipped,  to  try  out  its  plan  to  conquer  and  to 
dominate. 

It  is  facts  like  these  that  make  the  threat  of 
war  so  terrible,  as  I  have  elsewhere  [Funda- 
mental Questions,  p.  319]  quoted  Mr.  Wells 
as  saying: 

The  thought  of  war  will  sit  like  a  giant  over 


ITS  EVIDENCE  21 

all  human  affairs  for  the  next  two  decades.  It 
will  say  to  us  all :  "  Get  your  houses  in  order.  If 
you  squabble  among  yourselves,  waste  time,  liti- 
gate, muddle,  snatch  profits  and  shirk  obligations, 
I  will  certainly  come  again.  I  have  taken  all 
your  men  between  eighteen  and  fifty,  and  killed 
and  maimed  such  as  I  pleased — millions  of  them. 
I  have  wasted  your  substance  contemptuously. 
Now  you  have  multitudes  of  male  children  be- 
tween the  ages  of  nine  and  nineteen  running 
about  among  you,  delightful  and  beloved  boys. 
And  behind  them  come  millions  of  delightful 
babies.  Of  these  I  have  scarcely  smashed  and 
starved  a  paltry  hundred  thousand  perhaps.  But 
go  on  muddling,  each  for  himself  and  his  parish 
and  his  family,  and  none  for  all  the  world,  go  on 
in  the  old  way,  stick  to  your  rights,  stick  to  your 
claims,  each  one  of  you,  make  no  concessions  and 
no  sacrifices,  obstruct,  waste,  squabble,  and  pres- 
ently I  will  come  back  again  and  take  all  that 
fresh  harvest  of  life — all  those  millions  that  are 
now  sweet  children  and  dear  little  boys  and 
youths — and  I  will  squeeze  it  into  red  jam  be- 
tween my  hands,  and  mix  it  with  the  mud  of 
trenches  and  feast  on  it  before  your  eyes,  even 
more  damnably  than  I  have  done  with  your 
grown-up  sons  and  young  men.  And  I  have 
taken  most  of  your  superfluities  already;  next 
time  I  will  take  your  barest  necessities."  So — 
war;  and  in  these  days  of  universal  education  the 
great  mass  of  people  will  understand  plainly  now 
that  that  is  his  message  and  intention.     Men  who 


4i  THE  NEW  AGE 

cannot  be  swayed  by  the  love  of  order  and  crea- 
tion may  be  swayed  by  the  thought  of  death  and 
destruction. 

3.  The  very  fact,  too,  that  America  felt 
compelled  against  all  her  traditions  finally  to 
come  into  this  zvar  in  which  it  had  no  sHghtest 
political  or  territorial  concern,  is  itself  evidence 
that  it  had  become  plain  practically  to  the  en- 
tire American  people,  that  this  war  was  no 
ordinary  war,  but  of  the  most  fateful  human 
interest;  "civilization  itself,"  in  President 
Wilson's  words,  "  seeming  to  be  in  the  bal- 
ance." 

Mr.  Hoover's  cablegram  to  President  Wil- 
son upon  America's  declaration  of  war,  speak- 
ing for  the  members  of  the  American  Commis- 
sion for  Relief  in  Belgium,  was  written  out  of 
such  knowledge  of  the  contending  forces  as 
scarcely  another  man  had.  It  bore  similar 
testimony  to  the  fateful  significance  of  this 
war. 

We  wish  to  tell  you  that  there  is  no  word  in 
your  historic  statement  to  Congress  that  does  not 
find  a  response  in  all  our  hearts.  For  two  and 
one-half  years  we  have  been  obliged  to  remain 
silent  witnesses  of  the  character  of  the  forces 
dominating  this  war.  But  we  are  now  at  liberty 
to  say  that,  although  we  break  with  great  regret 


ITS  EVIDENCE  23 

our  association  with  many  German  individuals 
who  have  given  sympathetic  support  to  our  work, 
yet  your  message  enunciates  our  conviction  born 
of  our  intimate  experience  and  contact,  that  there 
is  no  hope  for  democracy  or  HberaHsm  and  con- 
sequently for  the  real  peace  and  safety  of  our 
country,  unless  the  system  which  brought  the 
world  into  this  unfathomable  misery  can  be 
stamped  out  once  for  all. 

4.  But  the  heart  of  the  matter  lies  even 
deeper  than  all  this.  Why  did  this  zvar  finally 
seem  so  different,  for  example,  from  the 
Franco-Prussian  ivar?  Why  did  Germany's 
cause  come  in  the  end  to  appear  like  a  kind  of 
embodiment  of  intrinsic  evil?  The  explana- 
tion does  not  lie  in  the  exaggerations  of  na- 
tional hates.  The  fact  is  that  men  felt  a  sort 
of  moral  horror  of  the  German  position,  that 
meant  much  more  than  that,  even  when  they 
had  not  thought  the  situation  through.  There 
need  be  no  attempt  to  disguise  the  faults  of  the 
allied  nations,  or  to  hold  them  free  from  blame 
in  the  remoter  causes  of  the  war.  Their  pre- 
vious record  had  been  most  vulnerable.  But 
men  came  gradually  to  see  that  what  Germany 
had  done  was  this:  with  her  customary  logical 
thoroughness  she  had  taken  what  was  worst  in 
the  selfish  aggressions  of  the  nations,  and  not 
only  copied  them,  and  justified  them,  but  car- 


24  THE  NEW  AGE 

ried  them  to  their  farthest  logical  conclusion  In 
an  anti-Christian  and  immoral  philosophy  of 
civilization,  of  the  State,  of  national  life,  and 
of  the  world  structure.  And  this  meant  in  lit- 
eral truth  a  death  grapple  with  such  degree  of 
Christian  civilization  as  the  world  had  thus  far 
attained.  Little  by  little  it  became  clear  to 
men  that  all  the  highest  interests  of  humanity 
and  even  the  possibility  of  a  decent  civilization 
were  at  stake  in  this  war. 

One  can  trace  with  some  clearness  the  steps 
which  Germany  had  taken,  for  she  proceeded 
to  develop  with  wonted  thoroughness  an  apolo- 
getic for  selfish  aggressive  zvars  as  a  profitable 
and  proper  business  for  a  State. 

She  built  that  apologetic,  first  of  all,  on  her 
unspeakably  arrogant  view  of  the  Germans  as 
a  super-race,  so  superlatively  gifted  that  the 
world  could  afford  to  have  the  contribution  of 
all  other  races  blotted  out;  of  a  "  Kultur  "  so 
transcendent  as  to  make  its  dominance  over  the 
world  the  highest  good  of  the  whole  human 
race.  The  expressions  of  this  arrogance  be- 
fore and  during  the  war  were  such  as  to  con- 
stitute nothing  less  than  an  indecent  moral 
exposure  of  the  attitude  of  a  great  people. 
The  doctrine  of  the  Germans  as  "  the  chosen 
people  '*  was  the  major  premise  of  all  their 
frightfulness  throughout  the  war.     Anything 


ITS  EVIDENCE  25 

that  might  be  supposed  to  put  this  divine  race 
in  its  proper  place  of  world  dominion  was 
counted  as  thereby  justified  and  sanctified. 
And  other  nations  need  to  be  sure  that  they, 
too,  do  not  fall,  in  a  slightly  disguised  form, 
into  a  like  arrogance. 

She  built  her  apologetic,  in  the  second  place, 
upon  an  essentially  immoral  theory  of  the  uni- 
verse, in  her  doctrine  of  the  State  as  above  all 
moral  obligations  of  every  kind — as  free,  there- 
fore, absolutely  without  scruple  to  take  any 
course  that  seemed  selfishly  profitable.  There 
was  nothing  so  terrible  that  it  could  not  be 
defended  by  this  doctrine. 

She  built  her  apologetic,  in  the  third  place, 
upon  a  materialistic  interpretation  of  evolution 
and  "  the  survival  of  the  fittest "  according  to 
which  only  physical  force  and  material  gains 
are  to  be  taken  into  account,  and  in  which 
might  at  any  stage  was  to  be  taken  forthwith 
as  the  proof  of  right.  In  Treitschke's  words: 
"Among  all  political  sins,  the  sin  of  feebleness 
is  the  most  contemptible.  It  is  the  political  sin 
against  the  Holy  Ghost." 

In  this  threefold  doctrine,  it  is  now  to  be 
noted,  Germany  persistently  schooled  her  en- 
tire people,  until  they  stood  as  a  .virtual  unit 
behind  her  war  ambitions.  In  Frederick  Har- 
rison's searching  words: 


26  THE  NEW  AGE 

In  all  the  world's  history,  no  race  has  been  so 
drilled,  schooled,  sermonized  into  a  sort  of  in- 
verted religion  of  hate,  envy,  jealousy,  greed, 
cruelty,  and  arrogance.  Man  and  woman,  girl 
and  boy  have  been  taught  from  childhood  this 
inhuman  vainglory  and  lust  of  power.  It  has 
grown  to  be  their  Gospel,  Creed,  Hymnal  and 
Prayer  Book.  Britain  and  America  cannot  com- 
prehend how  a  great  and  intelligent  people  can 
have  come  to  a  cult  so  Satanic. 

That  is  a  terrible  indictment ;  but  its  essential 
truth  is  evinced  by  the  almost  complete  lack  of 
any  note  of  penitence  among  the  German  peo- 
ple for  a  fright  fulness  which  was  far  worse 
than  native  barbarism — a  frightfulness  delib- 
erately adopted,  scientifically  developed,  and 
philosophically  defended.  For  a  savage  may 
have  Inconsistent  streaks  of  kindness.  A  the- 
ory has  no  bowels  of  compassion.  Nothing  so 
much  concerns  Germany  herself  as  utterly  to 
repudiate  her  whole  philosophy  of  national 
greatness. 

In  fact,  It  may  be  doubted  whether  there  has 
ever  been  before  so  conscious,  deliberate,  and 
stupendous  an  attempt  to  reverse  the  moral 
standards  of  the  race.  Kipling  states  the  case 
with  incisive  Insight  when  he  says  of  the  Ger- 
man: 

He  thought  out  the  hell  he  wished  to  create; 


ITS  EVIDENCE  2^ 

he  built  it  up  seriously  and  scientifically  with  his 
best  hands  and  brains ;  he  breathed  into  it  his  own 
spirit  that  it  might  grow  with  his  needs;  and  at 
the  hour  that  he  judged  best  he  let  it  loose  on 
the  world  that  till  then  had  believed  there  were 
limits  beyond  which  men  born  of  women  might 
not  sin.  .  .  .  For  it  is  the  peculiar  essence 
of  German  Kultur,  which  is  the  German  re- 
ligion, that  it  is  Germany's  moral  duty  to  break 
every  tie,  every  restriction,  that  binds  man  to 
fellow-man,  if  she  thinks  it  will  pay.  Therefore, 
all  mankind  are  against  her.  Therefore,  all  man- 
kind must  be  against  her  till  she  learns  that  no 
race  can  make  its  way,  or  break  its  way,  outside 
the  borders  of  humanity. 

In  literal  truth,  the  worst  possible  thing  that 
could  have  happened  to  the  German  people 
themselves  was  success  in  so  wicked  a  war. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  greatest  kindness  to 
them  is  that  they  should  find  that  the  war  has 
been  thoroughly  unprofitable.  But  no  mere 
sorrow  for  consequences  will  replace  the  neces- 
sity of  genuine  penitence.  For  the  fruits  of 
penitence  cannot  be  had  without  penitence  it- 
self. And  one  of  the  most  sinister  elements 
in  the  world's  life  to-day  is  this  very  general 
lack  of  penitence  on  the  part  of  the  German 
nation,  not  so  much  for  particular  deeds,  as  for 
their  whole  anti-Christian  philosophy  of  na- 


28  THE  NEW  AGE 

tional  life.     For  it  suggests  the  possibility  of  a 
like  war  to  follow. 

One  is  most  reluctant  to  say  these  things  in 
times  of  peace.  But  to  forget  essential  moral 
differences  is  to  forget  the  great  ends  for  which 
our  dead  gave  their  lives,  and  to  dishonour 
their  memory — 

If  ye  break  faith  with  us  who  die, 
We  shall  not  sleep  the'  poppies  grow 
In  Flanders'  fields. 

Moreover,  to  forget  essential  moral  differ- 
ences is  finally  to  cry,  "  Peace,  peace,  when 
there  is  no  peace."  We  may  not  "  prophesy 
smooth  things  "  here.  To  gloss  over  the  plain 
fact  that  this  war  has  been  in  essence  a  head-on 
collision  of  irreconcilable  ideals  not  only  helps 
nothing,  it  confuses  the  issue,  and  it  destroys 
from  the  beginning  the  possibility  of  the  res- 
toration of  honest  relations.  Even  decent  re- 
lations between  nations  on  the  German  theory 
are  simply  impossible.  Unless,  therefore,  the 
whole  cause  of  the  Allies  has  been  a  false  one ; 
unless  the  human  race  is  passively  to  resign 
itself  to  repetitions  of  this  war  on  a  still  more 
terrible  scale,  truly  friendly  and  cooperative 
relations  with  the  Central  Powers  imperatively 
demand  that  Germany  renounce  forever  her 
entire  philosophy  of  the  State,  and  come  into 


ITS   EVIDENCE  29 

some  honest  agreement  with  the  Allies  as  to 
the  fundamental  aims  and  standards  of  civili- 
zation and  of  international  relations. 

This  is  what  the  war  at  bottom  meant.  This 
is  what  we  mean,  too,  when  we  say  that  the 
supremely  significant  fact  about  this  war  is 
that  on  the  part  of  the  Allies  it  was  a  zvar  for 
fundamentally  moral  and  religious  aims;  that 
it  was  a  war  for  the  conviction  that  the  moral 
law  extends  to  nations  as  truly  as  to  individ- 
uals; that  the  principles  of  morals  and  Chris- 
tianity either  has  no  warrant  at  all,  or  holds 
in  full  force  for  classes  and  nations  and  races. 

IV 

The  Changing  World-Order 
But  it  is  not  only  this  epoch-making  charac- 
ter of  the  great  war  which  has  brought  a  new 
crisis  in  our  time.  Besides  the  war's  awesome 
application  of  modern  science  to  destructive 
purposes  and  the  relatively  new  immoral  phi- 
losophy of  the  State  and  of  national  life,  that 
aimed  at  reversing  the  moral  standards  of  the 
race,  there  are  other  characteristics  of  our 
time  which  indicate  a  changing  zvorld-order 
and  so  something  tnat  may  fittingly  be  called  a 
new  age. 

1.  Its  characteristics.  It  is  possible,  at  this 
point,  to  do  little  more  than  name  some  of  the 


30  THE  NEW   AGE 

outstanding  characteristics  of  this  changing 
world-order.  These  characteristics  may  be 
said  to  be:  the  constantly  intensifying  world 
solidarity;  the  prodigious  increase  in  the  last 
century  through  modern  science  of  the  world's 
resources  of  power  and  wealth  and  knowledge ; 
forced  scientific  cooperation  and  organization 
on  a  scale  and  to  a  degree  never  before  seen; 
the  almost  world-wide  trend  toward  democracy 
and  universal  education;  the  establishment  of 
a  League  of  Nations ;  a  steadily  growing  inter- 
nationalism; and  the  deepening  sense  of  the 
necessity  of  larger  and  more  significant  goals 
than  organized  humanity  has  yet  cherished. 
These  characteristics  all  bear  witness  to  the 
reality  of  a  new  age. 

2.  The  World  Still  Plastic.  We  may  also 
hope  that  with  these  characteristics,  the  world 
may  prove  still  plastic  enough  to  give  assur- 
ance of  greater  achievements  than  have  yet 
come  out  of  the  war. 

Even  the  strong  reactionary  tendency  seen 
in  many  quarters  cannot  wholly  escape  some 
vision  of  the  fact  that  "Humpty-Dumpty"  can- 
not be  put  together  again,  and  that  in  any  case 
all  of  the  old  is  not  good  enough  to  deserve 
preservation.  Reaction  cannot,  one  would 
think,  be  permanently  blind  to  the  constantly 
recurring  conflict,  in  which  progress  is  always 


ITS   EVIDENCE  3 1 

involved, — the  conflict  between  "  historic  legit- 
imate right  "  and  "  abstract  natural  right  " ;  so 
that  mere  reaction  is  self-confessed  wrong. 

On  the  other  hand,  there  is  a  wide-spread 
tendency  to  call  everything  into  question.  Per- 
haps Laski  does  not  exaggerate  this  trend  when 
he  writes: 

We  have  concentrated  into  the  fury  of  the  past 
live  years  a  generation  of  eager  experience.  Cer- 
tainly no  such  intellectual  upheaval  has  been 
known  since  the  spectacle  of  Revolutionary 
France  burst  upon  a  world  divided  between  fear 
and  admiration.  Over  and  above  the  spectacle 
of  a  world  amazed  at  the  prevalence  of  dissent 
from  acknowledged  dogma  in  art  and  science  and 
religion,  we  have  a  wide-spread  attack  upon  so- 
cial notions  not  a  decade  ago  conceived  as  funda- 
mental. .  .  .  Every  generation  must  think 
out  anew  the  conditions  of  its  freedom.  .  .  . 
What  we  fail  consistently  to  realize  is  how  much 
the  overwhelming  force  of  society  is  always 
opposed  to  novelty.  We  live  by  our  routines. 
[The  New  Republic,  Feb.  18,  1920.] 

While  we  can  be  sure,  then,  that  both  the 
radical  and  conservative  instincts  are  at  work, 
we  may  hope  that  we  shall  not  be  so  mastered 
by  old  habit  and  routine  as  to  fail  to  make  full 
use  of  such  plasticity  as  exists  in  the  world- 
order  for  a  great  forward  advance.    From  this 


32  THE  NEW   AGE 

point  of  view,  Bolshevism — ^however  one  inter- 
prets it — may  have  a  world  service  to  render, 
in  compelling  us  all  to  face  new  problems,  and 
to  refuse  to  accept  shallow,  easy-going  solu- 
tions. 

V 
The  Significance  of  These  After-the-zvar  Days 

The  simple  fact  is,  that  one  writes  in  these 
times  under  the  constant  sense  of  the  inade- 
quacy of  human  language  to  express  either  the 
possible  losses  or  the  possible  gains  of  these 
fateful  days. 

Mr.  Wells  made  Mr.  Britling  say  early  in 
the  war:  "  This  is  the  end  and  the  beginning  of 
an  age.  This  is  something  far  greater  than 
the  French  Revolution  .  .  .  and  we  live 
in  it."  If  that  was  true  when  Mr.  Wells  wrote 
those  words,  it  is  still  more  true  now.  For  we 
are  only  beginning  to  see  that  the  world  has 
been  shaken  to  its  centre  in  this  war,  as  it  was 
not  shaken  even  by  the  French  Revolution. 
And  in  these  days  Dawson's  words  yet  hold: 
"  We  are  living  at  a  time  when  days  and  weeks 
have  the  fullness  and  significance  of  years  and 
decades." 

The  immeasurable  cost  of  the  peace  which 
has  come  makes  any  other  view  a  blasphemy. 
Let  one  make  real  to  himself  the  cost  in  the 


ITS   EVIDENCE  33 

treasure  of  wealth,  handicapping  constructive 
enterprises  of  good  for  decades  to  come.  Let 
him  put  vividly  before  himself  in  terms  of  in- 
dividuals the  sacrifice  of  life.  Let  him  remem- 
ber that  France  alone  lost  in  those  killed  in 
battle  one  million,  four  hundred  thousand  men. 
Great  Britain's  number  of  slain  brings  the 
total,  simply  for  those  two  nations,  up  to  more 
than  two  millions.  Russia  estimates  a  toll  of 
not  less  than  seven  millions.  The  Copenhagen 
Society  for  the  Study  of  the  Consequences  of 
the  War  concludes  that  the  total  cost  of  the 
world  war  in  lives  has  reached  the  appalling 
figure  of  35,380,000.  And  this  is  to  say  noth- 
ing of  those  other  millions  of  wrecked  lives 
and  wrecked  homes.  Well  may  one  repeat 
Simons'  words:  "Millions  have  died  that  the 
trampling  war  madness  might  end.  It  is  better 
to  see  that  they  have  not  died  in  vain  than  to  be- 
wail their  dying."  If,  then,  we  are  to  keep  our 
faith  at  all  in  a  God  of  truth  and  righteousness, 
in  the  fundamental  honesty  of  the  universe,  we 
must  believe  that  such  unimaginable  sacrifices 
have  not  been  poured  out  in  vain.  No  small 
advances  will  answer  the  moral  demands  which 
men  will  here  inevitably  make. 

Rupert  Brooke,  the  brilliant  young  Briton, 
who  himself  a  little  later  In  the  war  joined  the 
company  of  those  whom  he  calls  "  the  rich 


34  THE   NEW  AGE 

dead,"  shadowed  forth  both  their  untold  sacri- 
fices and  their  divine  gifts  to  men,  in  words 
which  are  a  perpetual  challenge  to  the  living, 
to  keep  these  gifts  true  as  the  permanent  spir- 
itual fruit  of  the  war; 

Blow  out,  you  bugles,  over  the  rich  Dead ! 

There's  none  of  these  so  lonely  and  poor  of  old. 
But,  dying,  has  made  us  rarer  gifts  than  gold. 

These  laid  the  world  away ;  poured  out  the  red 
Sweet  wine  of  youth ;  gave  up  the  years  to  be 
Of  work  and  joy,  and  that  unhoped  serene, 
That  men  call  age;  and  those  who  would  have 
been, 

Their  sons,  they  gave,  their  immortality. 

Blow,  bugles,  blow!     They  brought  us,  for  our 
dearth 
Holiness,  lacked  so  long,  and  Love,  and  Pain; 

Honour  has  come  back,  as  a  king,  to  earth, 
And  paid  his  subjects  with  a  royal  wage; 

And  Nobleness  walks  in  our  ways  again ; 
And  we  have  come  into  our  heritage. 

And  for  the  civilians,  a  cartoon  in  the  Chi- 
cago "Evening  Post  strikes  home  to  every 
thoughtful  man.  It  represents  "  our  better 
selves,"  from  the  vantage  ground  of  unstinted, 
unselfish  service,  looking  back  at  "  our  old 
selfish  existence  "  in  its  scramble  for  gain,  and 
asking  musingly:  "Is  it  possible  we  will  go 
back   to   it?"     And   the   significance   of   the 


ITS   EVIDENCE  35 

question  lies  not  simply  in  the  deterioration  of 
the  individual  there  threatened,  but  in  the  un- 
speakable losses  for  the  race  so  involved. 

For  we  have  now  come  to  the  most  critical 
time  of  all  in  this  whole  world  struggle.  Have 
we  really  won  this  war?  That  is  still  to  be 
determined.  There  is  such  a  thing  as  a  deci- 
sive military  victory,  coupled  at  the  same  time 
with  an  equally  decisive  defeat  of  the  high 
aims  for  which  the  war  was  fought.  If  we 
reinstate  in  power,  under  other  names,  the 
same  great  evils  against  which  we  fought,  these 
millions  will  have  died  in  vain,  and  we  shall 
have  a  still  more  terrible  war  to  fight  over 
again  in  the  years  ahead.  And  these  after- 
the-war  days  bear  depressing  witness  how  eas- 
ily our  frail  human  nature  slumps  back  into 
the  old  ways — the  old  indulgences,  the  old  an- 
tagonisms, the  old  injustices. 

No  wonder  that  Lloyd  George  said  so  pas- 
sionately to  a  labour  deputation  in  the  midst  of 
the  war:  "  Don't  always  be  thinking  of  getting 
back  to  where  you  were  before  the  war.  Get 
a  really  new  world.  .  .  .  The  readier  we 
are  to  cut  away  from  the  past,  the  better  we 
are  likely  to  succeed.  Think  out  new  ways, 
new  methods  of  dealing  with  old  problems. 
Get  a  new  world." 

My  chief  fear  for  all  the  later  months  of  the 


36  THE   NEW   AGE 

war  was  that  when  peace  came,  it  would  come 
suddenly  (as  it  did),  and  that  we  should  all  be 
so  war-wear)',  so  sick  and  disgusted  with  the 
whole  strife  and  its  consequences,  so  anxious 
to  get  back  to  the  old  ways,  and  to  any  kind  of 
a  patched-up  peace,  that  we  should  nervelessly 
let  slip  out  of  our  hands  the  largest  single  op- 
portunity that  the  race  has  ever  had  for  a 
great  advance.  Just  here  lies  the  significance 
of  these  after-the-war  days. 


LECTURE  II 
THE  NEW  AGE:  ITS  PERILS 


J2;J85()7 


LECTURE  II 

THE   NEW  AGE:   ITS   PERILS 

IF  we  have,  then,  to  reckon  in  some  real 
sense  with  a  new  age — with  days  critic- 
ally significant  for  all  civilization  and  for 
the  vital  interests  of  all  men,  we  need  clearly  to 
see  both  the  perils  and  the  values  of  this  new 
age,  and  to  withstand  those  perils  and  to  carry 
on  and  fulfill  those  values.  For,  speaking  only 
for  our  own  country,  it  must  be  frankly  said 
that  America  is  in  far  more  danger  of  essential 
failure  now  in  these  after-the-war  responsibili- 
ties than  in  the  time  of  war. 

First  of  all,  what  are  the  chief  perils  that 
men  confront  in  these  days  following  upon  the 
greatest  revolution  the  world  has  ever  seen, 
days  that  ought  to  be  days  of  vision,  of  con- 
structive imagination,  of  girded  wills,  and  of 
high  and  world-wide  accomplishment? 

As  has  already  been  intimated,  all  the  perils 
of  this  critical  time  may  be  summed  up  in  one 
— the  peril  of  letting  slip  what  is  probably  the 
largest  single  opportunity  that  the  race  has  ever 
had  for  a  great  advance.  But  this  inclusive 
39 


40  THE   NEW  AGE 

peril  would  itself  be  the  result  of  certain  spe- 
cific dangers  now  threatening  the  world's  life 
— the  perils  of  an  inevitable  inheritance  of  evil 
from  the  war;  of  disillusionment;  of  reaction; 
of  destructive  revolution. 

I 

The  Perils  of  the  Inevitable  Inheritance  of 
Evil  from  the  War 

1.  First  of  all,  in  the  evil  inheritance,  this 
most  terrible  of  wars  was  marked  by  frightful 
destrnctii'cncss  in  every  sphere.  Just  because 
it  was,  as  we  saw,  no  ordinary  war,  there  was 
such  a  massing  of  all  destructive  agencies  as 
left  no  realm  of  good  unharmed,  whether 
property,  or  human  life,  or  constructive  enter- 
prise of  civilization,  or  beauty  or  friendly  rela- 
tions. This  destruction  and  wasting  bank- 
ruptcy threaten  to  lay  a  heavy  burden  on 
generations  yet  unborn  and  become  a  direct 
handicap  on  every  good  cause. 

2.  Indeed,  the  direct  toll  of  the  war  was  so 
intolerable  as  to  bring  all  decent  civiliaation  to 
the  verge  of  collapse.  Count  Okuma  deliber- 
ately declared  during  the  war  that  the  Orient 
was  seeing  nothing  less  than  the  death  of  Euro- 
pean civilization.  And  in  multitudes  of  situa- 
tions the  condition  of  things  is  distinctly  worse 
now  than  at  the  time  of  the  armistice.     Pro- 


ITS   PERILS  41 

fessor  Ward  hardly  overstates  the  case  when 
he  says:  "  Whatever  any  war  may  have  done 
for  progress  in  the  past,  it  is  almost  practically 
certain  that  the  universal  war  of  modern  times, 
both  in  its  extent  and  in  its  nature,  is  humanity 
committing  suicide."  [The  New  Social  Order, 
p.  377.]  It  may  be  doubted  if  civilization 
could  outlive  even  one  more  such  war.  So 
real  are  the  perils. 

3.  Another  evil  inheritance  from  this  war 
is  the  infections  spread  of  the  intoxication  of 
power.  The  use  of  force  by  the  Central 
Powers  on  the  most  stupendous  scale  the  world 
had  ever  seen,  drove  the  Allied  Powers  to  a 
like  dependence  on  force.  Nations  became 
drunk  with  power.  For  it  is  not  only  true  that 
tyrants  use  power,  but  that  unlimited  power 
breeds  tyrants.  Such  tremendous  and  irre- 
sponsible power  as  this  war  made  possible  cre- 
ates the  appetite  for  more  power,  and  like  a 
drug  undermines  character  in  man  and  nation. 
The  curse  of  this  intoxication  of  power  is  likely 
to  rest  like  a  spell  upon  the  nations  for  years 
to  come. 

4.  This  intoxication  of  power,  moreover,  is 
only  part  of  that  Prnssianiziny  of  the  nations 
— even  the  Allies — that  was  almost  inevitably 
involved  in  the  conflict  with  Prussia.  If,  as 
the   philosophers   contend,   there   is   a  certain 


42  THE  NEW  AGE 

well-nigh  unavoidable  approximation  to  that 
against  which  we  fight,  a  part  of  the  victory  of 
the  Teutons  will  be  that  even  in  defeat  they 
communicated  to  the  Allies  the  fever  that  was 
in  themselves. 

5.  But  one  of  the  worst  elements  in  our 
evil  inheritance  from  the  war  is  the  wide- 
spread tendency  to  carry  over  into  times  of 
peace  the  moods  and  methods  of  zvar — to  apply 
war  measures  to  peace  conditions.  America 
has  witnessed  since  the  armistice  increasing 
violation  of  fundamental  liberties,  such  as,  it 
would  seem,  should  call  forth  protest  from 
every  true  friend  of  democracy  and  freedom. 
As  Mr.  Devine  puts  it:  "  Freedom  of  speech, 
of  press  and  of  assembly  is  denied  to  those  to 
whom  we  do  not  wish  to  be  just,  and  the  denial 
comes  not  from  revolutionists  but  from  fright- 
ened conservatives."  There  has  been  an  all 
too  ready  appeal  to  force,  to  raiding,  to  injunc- 
tions, to  illegal  deportations.  Compulsions, 
hardly  justified  in  a  free  country  even  in  war 
time,  have  been  used  without  compunction  to 
deal  with  problems  of  peace.  It  is  refreshing 
to  have  Judge  Bourquin,  a  Federal  Judge  of 
Montana,  in  a  trial  of  an  alien  arrested  without 
warrant  and  ordered  deported,  speak  out  in  no 
uncertain  tones  to  the  whole  country  on  the 
issues  involved: 


ITS    PERILS  43 

The  alien  who  advocates  the  doctrines  revealed 
in  the  case,  is  a  far  less  danger  to  this  country 
than  are  the  parties  who  in  violation  of  law  and 
order,  of  humanity  and  justice,  have  brought  him 
to  deportation.  They  are  the  spirit  of  intolerance 
incarnate,  and  the  most  alarming  manifestation 
in  America  to-day.  Thoughtful  men  who  love 
this  country  and  its  institutions  see  more  danger 
in  them  and  in  their  practices,  and  the  govern- 
ment by  hysteria  that  they  stimulate,  than  in  the 
miserable,  baited  "  Reds  "  that  are  the  ostensible 
occasion  of  them  all.  [The  New  Republic,  March 
31,  1920.] 

In  the  language  of  Judge  Anderson  of  the 
United  States  District  Court  of  Boston,  "  It  is 
no  light  thing  to  deprive  men  of  their  liberty." 

According  to  the  impartial  and  dispassionate 
testimony  of  the  investigators  of  the  Social 
Service  Commission  of  the  Federal  Council  of 
Churches,  during  the  steel  strike  in  Pennsyl- 
vania, the  most  elementary  freedom  of  speech 
and  freedom  of  assembly,  even  where  there 
was  no  violence,  were  interfered  with.  In  the 
same  strike,  the  press  was  so  manipulated  that 
it  is  the  simple  truth  to  say  that  the  people  were 
not  allowed  to  have  the  facts  necessary  to  a 
correct  judgment.  For  example,  the  report  of 
the  Senate  Committee  upon  the  strike  was  so 
presented  in  the  great  body  of  the  daily  press 
as  to  seem  much   more  unfavourable  to  the 


44  THE  NEW   AGE 

Strikers  than  in  fact  it  was.  Only  a  few  of 
the  more  independent  weekly  journals  gave 
both  sides  of  the  controversy.  To  strike  thus 
at  the  sources  of  knowledge  in  the  press — it  is 
not  to  be  forgotten — is  to  imperil  all  demo- 
cratic government. 

Moreover  the  expulsion  of  the  five  Socialists 
from  the  New  York  Assembly  and  the  sequel 
in  the  abominable  Lusk  bills,  with  their  pro- 
posals to  dictate  opinions  to  citizens,  are  so 
hideous  an  invasion  of  rights  in  a  representa- 
tive government  as  to  make  one  feel  that  our 
national  humiliation  at  home  is  to  be  made  to 
match  our  humiliation  abroad.  For  the  action 
of  the  New  York  Assembly  means  nothing  less 
than  that — in  another's  vigorous  language — 
"  it  has  denied  to  a  large  group  of  American 
citizens  the  exercise  of  the  right  of  political 
representation  because  it  does  not  agree  with 
their  political  and  economic  opinions.  In  so 
far  as  its  action  prevails,  the  State  of  New 
York  has  ceased  to  be  a  democracy."  [Nczv 
Republic,  April  14,  p.  200.]  No  wonder  that 
Mr.  Hughes  and  the  New  York  Bar  Associa- 
tion protested !  The  standing  committee  of  the 
Association  on  the  character  of  proposed  legis- 
lation, it  is  also  to  be  noted,  speaks  out  in  no 
uncertain  terms  upon  the  Lusk  bills.  And  this 
testimony  from  lawyers  upon  this  point  is  par- 


ITS   PERILS  45 

ticularly  significant,  for  as  a  body  lawyers  are 
likely  to  be  pretty  conservative. 

6.  As  a  part  of  the  inheritance  of  evil  from 
the  war  must  be  reckoned  also  the  inescapable 
reaction  from  the  stress  and  strain  and  excite- 
ment of  war.  It  was  to  be  expected.  All  men 
feel  it  in  some  form.  Each  class  is  inclined  to 
think  that  it  itself  has  earned  and  now  de- 
serves special  consideration.  There  is  wide- 
spread distaste  for  common  peaceful  work  and 
for  moderate  profits.  Habits  of  industry  and 
thrift  have  been  broken  down.  Passionate 
pursuit  of  pleasure  and  of  uncontrolled  self- 
indulgence  has  become  epidemic,  as  even  our 
comic  papers  point  out.  These  are  only  a  few 
particulars  in  the  natural  general  demoraliza- 
tion of  life  which  comes  through  war.  This 
demoralization  is  an  omnipresent  peril  to  be 
overcome. 

7.  Nor  in  our  joy  over  the  way  In  which 
the  great  cause  of  war  called  forth  a  ringing 
response  from  soldiers  and  nation  alike  may 
we  shut  our  eyes  to  the  perils  zvhich  the  zvar 
had  for  the  inner  life  of  the  soldier — not  only 
the  more  obvious  coarser  temptations  of  im- 
purity, obscenity  and  profanity;  but  the 
subtler  temptations  of  distance  from  home,  of 
loneliness,  of  the  abnormal  absence  of  the  so- 
ciety of  good  women,  of  facing  at  some  points 


46  THE  NEW  AGE 

the  quite  different  standards  of  another  people, 
of  much  idleness,  of  intolerable  monotony,  of 
dishonesty  through  the  breaking  down  of  the 
sense  of  private  property,  of  the  reduced  neces- 
sity for  the  man's  own  initiative,  of  the  moral 
and  religious  shock  that  comes  from  familiar- 
ity with  the  inevitable  brutalities  of  war. 
Some  of  these  conditions  have  deeply  marked 
many  men,  and  made  more  difficult  their  ad- 
justment to  these  days  of  peace.  Such  abnor- 
mal conditions  as  war  produces  can  hardly  fail 
often  to  work  abnormal  results. 

8.  And  when  one  turns  to  note  the  zvider 
harvest  of  evil  from  the  war,  he  may  accept 
the  careful  judgment  of  one  of  the  ablest  of 
American  correspondents  abroad  writing  soon 
after  the  armistice: 

The  spectacle  of  European  ruin  is  simply  ap- 
palling. Nineteenth  century  civilization  has 
broken  down.  .  .  .  There  is  a  collapse  of 
human  moral  energy,  a  revival  of  the  primitive 
barbaric  instincts  and  the  fierce  endeavour  to  have 
one's  little  private  will  by  force.  .  .  .  Up 
through  the  European  chaos  is  surely  creeping 
the  menace  not  of  socialism  but  of  Bolshevism, 
which  is  the  revengeful  shadow  of  reckless 
modern  materialism. 

And  one  of  the  most  thoughtful  of  our 
American  editors  adds  in  comment: 


ITS  PERILS  47 

In  spite,  that  is,  of  the  victory  over  Germany, 
and  as  a  direct  consequence  of  the  use  of  war  on 
such  a  destructive  scale  in  the  interest  of  civiliza- 
tion, the  very  tissue  of  civilization  is  suffering 
from  corruption  and  disease. 

This  American  judgment  is  confirmed  from 
an  English  point  of  view,  when,  in  terms  per- 
haps too  pessimistic,  Mr.  Churchill  feels  com- 
pelled to  say  that  the  state  of  the  world  at  the 
present  time  in  no  zvay  betokens  the  endurance 
of  peace,  except  from  the  point  of  view  that 
the  fighters  are  very  much  exhausted. 

People  talk  about  the  world  on  the  morrow  of 
the  Great  War  as  if  somehow  or  other  we  had 
all  been  transported  into  a  higher  sphere.  We 
have  been  transformed  into  a  sphere  which  is 
definitely  lower  from  almost  every  point  of  view 
than  that  which  we  had  attained  in  the  days  be- 
fore Armageddon.  .  .  .  There  never  was  a 
time  when  more  complete  callousness  and  indif- 
ference to  human  life  and  suffering  were  ex- 
hibited by  the  great  communities  all  over  the 
world.  On  the  expanse  of  Europe  an  insidious 
seething  scene  of  misery  has  formed — a  malevo- 
lence which  is  not  for  the  moment  dangerous,  be- 
cause it  proceds  only  on  the  basis  of  exhaustion 
of  a  kind  that  the  world  has  never  before 
recorded. 

And  the  casual  way  in  which  three  or  four 


48  THE  NEW  AGE 

premiers — ignoring  the  great  bulk  of  the  na- 
tions— are  now  parcelHng  out  the  spoils  and 
determining  the  fate  of  the  world,  gives  small 
ground  for  expectation  of  just  and  permanent 
settlements  from  the  war. 

These  are  some  of  the  perils  involved  in  our 
inheritance  of  evil  from  the  war.  With  all 
possible  qualifications,  one  can  hardly  fail  to 
recognize  the  gravity  of  the  perils  which  the 
war  has  left  us. 

II 

The  Perils  of  Disillusionment 
To  this  direct  inheritance  of  evil  from  the 
war  must  be  added,  in  the  second  place,  the 
perils  of  disilliisionnient,  sapping  courage  and 
faith.  For  this  direct  inheritance  of  evil 
tended  at  once  to  counteract  hoped-for  gains, 
and  so  to  lead  to  disillusionment  and  depres- 
sion, if  not  to  cynicism. 

The  historical  situation  at  Paris  after  the 
armistice  brought  this  disillusionment  to  a  cli- 
max, certainly  for  many  of  the  most  thought- 
ful Americans. 

In  the  first  place,  there  had  been  no  mistak- 
ing the  rare  idealism  ivith  which  America  came 
into  the  war.  For  America  made  her  decision 
on  high  ideal,  and  essentially  Christian 
grounds.     Not   for  territorial  or  commercial 


ITS   PERILS  49 

gains;  abjuring  all  idea  of  later  indemnities; 
practically  unmoved,  it  must  be  stated,  by 
thoughts  even  of  self-defense;  after  every 
righteous  effort  to  preserve  peaceful  relations 
with  Germany  had  been  exhausted;  when  the 
greatness  of  the  issues  had  become  plain;  in 
the  face  of  fixed  American  traditions ;  in  mar- 
vellously unified  fashion;  and  across  three 
thousand  miles  of  sea;  America  threw  her 
whole  self,  with  her  every  resource,  into  this 
struggle,  for  the  sake  of  righteousness,  of  hu- 
manity, of  civilization.  It  was  a  singularly 
impressive  moral  movement.  No  wonder  that 
the  distinguished  litterateur,  Hughes  le  Roux, 
voiced  his  conviction,  in  an  address  at  the 
American  Military  Headquarters  in  France, 
that  history  had  never  seen  a  great  nation 
moved  to  war  by  so  completely  unselfish  and 
idealistic  motives. 

In  the  second  place,  from  the  time  America 
entered  the  war  up  to  the  armistice,  President 
Wilson  was  recognised  and  zuelcomed  as  inter- 
preter and  protagonist  of  the  cause  of  the 
Allies.  He  was  in  truth  the  liberal  leader  of 
the  world.  The  influence  of  the  fourteen 
points  upon  the  armistice  and  in  the  Near  East 
was  immense,  as  the  inquiries  of  the  Commis- 
sion on  Mandates  in  Turkey  made  certain,  and 
far  greater  than  it  is  now  the  fashion  to  admit. 


50  THE   NEW  AGE 

Class  and  party  and  national  selfishness — in  the 
appalling  strain  of  the  Great  War — were  in 
abeyance,  and  men  were  glad  to  accept  Presi- 
dent Wilson  as  their  spokesman  because  he 
made  them  believe  that  there  was  in  the  holo- 
caust of  war  something  greatly  worth  fighting 
for. 

In  the  third  place,  President  Wilson's  influ- 
ence and  his  generally  idealistic  attitude  con- 
tinued to  prevail  in  large  degree  in  the  Peace 
Conference  through  the  time  of  the  adoption 
of  the  Covenant  of  the  League  of  Nations; 
and  forward-looking  men  could  still  believe 
that  the  foundations  for  a  great  new  world- 
order  were  being  laid,  and  could  rejoice  that 
they  had  lived  to  see  the  day  when  so  noble  a 
document  could  be  made  the  practical  outcome 
of  a  world  war. 

But  when  the  nations  turned  to  the  actual 
making  of  treaties — the  immense  difficulties  of 
which  should  not  be  forgotten — it  became  rap- 
idly clear  that  the  selfish  scramble  among  the 
nations  had  set  in.  The  Allies  were  glad  to 
use  Mr.  Wilson  as  an  instrument  for  the  ac- 
complishment of  their  war  aims.  But  they 
found  it  singularly  easy  to  forget  him  and  his 
principles  when  the  war  was  over.  Even  in 
the  course  of  the  war,  selfish  unjustifiable  se- 
cret treaties  had  been  made.     And  now  men 


ITS  PERILS  51 

witnessed,  for  example,  the  Japanese  treatment 
of  Shantung;  Italy's  attitude  toward  the  Jugo- 
slavs; the  excessive  demands  of  the  French; 
Britain's  absorption  of  Egypt  and  Persia,  and 
her  general  insatiable  appetite  for  more  terri- 
tory ;  the  utter  ignoring  by  both  the  British  and 
the  French  of  the  solemn  promises  to  the  Arabs 
in  the  Anglo-French  Declaration  of  Novem- 
ber 9,  1918;  and  the  mistaken  provincial  selfish 
patriotism  of  the  American  Senate  in  the  at- 
tempt to  return  to  America's  old  isolation,  to 
repudiate  the  rare  idealism  with  which  America 
came  into  the  war,  and  basely  to  shirk  her 
world  responsibilities. 

Because  of  all  this,  disillusionment,  depres- 
sion and  almost  cynicism  spread  like  a  plague 
among  many  of  the  best  of  America's  repre- 
sentatives abroad.  One  could  feel  it  in  the 
very  air  of  Paris.  Men  asked  themselves  in 
amazement:  Is  all  this  not  simply  the  spirit  and 
methods  of  the  old  condemned  diplomacy?  Is 
there  any  real  difference  in  fundamental  ideals? 
Are  these  the  aims  for  which  America  fought  ? 
Have  any  of  us,  indeed,  sufficiently  taken  into 
account  what  this  disillusionment  meant  to  our 
young  soldiers,  so  that  many  of  them  almost 
inevitably  felt  betrayed,  and  thus  have  become 
embittered?  There  followed, naturally  enough, 
something  like  an  utter  breakdown  of  faith  in 


52  THE  NEW   AGE 

the  Allies,  and  among  the  Allies  in  one  an- 
other. And  this  general  breakdown  of  faith 
in  one  another,  in  the  dealing  of  the  nations 
with  one  another,  is  in  itself  a  national  and 
world  calamity — a  moral  world  panic  and  the 
gravest  peril  of  our  time.  For  where  trust  has 
v^ished,  great  cooperative  goals  for  humanity 
are  made  impossible.  And  so  faith  and  cour- 
age fail. 

These  are  the  perils  of  disillusionment. 

Ill 
The  Perils  of  Reaction 
When  face  to  face  with  the  evil  inheritance 
from  the  war,  and  with  disillusionment  as  to 
anticipated  gains,  it  is  natural  for  men  to  seek 
to  scuttle  back  to  the  old  goods — to  look  long- 
ingly back  to  the  flesh  pots  of  Egypt,  to  the 
pre-war  world  with  its  frequent  comfort,  its 
openness  everywhere  to  travel,  and  its  fairly 
decent  world  relations.  All  this,  men  tend  to 
set  over  against  the  present  almost  impossible 
economic  conditions,  and  the  present  suspicion, 
fear,  ill-will,  and  threat  of  Bolshevism  and 
mob-rule.  The  thought  of  reaction,  thus,  the 
desire  simply  to  bring  back  the  old  situation, 
rather  than  to  venture  on  a  world  untried,  is 
almost  inevitable.  We  have  the  perils  of  reac- 
tion to  reckon  with. 


ITS  PERILS  53 

1.  This  tendency  to  simple  reaction  affects 
us  nil,  almost  against  our  will.  There  is,  to 
begin  with,  the  natural  reaction  from  the 
physical  and  moral  strain  of  the  war — a  kind 
of  pathological  fatigue  that  catches  us  un- 
awares. There  is,  too,  the  lazy  longing  for 
the  ease  of  the  old  ways,  the  old  routine,  the 
worn  ruts,  that  makes  us  impatient  of  the  per- 
sistent demands  of  any  new  regime.  There  is, 
also,  the  mental  indolence  of  "  old-fogyism," 
as  James  calls  it,  that  besets  all  men — the  un- 
willingness to  face  new  issues,  to  see  them  as 
new,  to  call  them  by  their  right  names,  and  to 
adjust  to  them — instead  of  clapping  old  labels 
upon  them  and  putting  them  away  in  the  old 
pigeon-holes,  and  leaving  one's  own  mind  un- 
disturbed. Everybody  hates  mental  house- 
cleaning,  and  there  is  never  a  good  time  for  it. 
To  ask  a  whole  generation — or  at  least  the 
leaders — ^to  undertake  this  repugnant  task  with 
energies  already  well-nigh  spent,  seems  almost 
hopeless.  Moreover  the  psychological  mood 
in  which  men  find  themselves  after  this  deso- 
lating war  is  unfavourable  to  any  decisions — 
to  say  nothing  of  the  trenchant  and  sweeping 
decisions  now  called  for.  The  prevalent  mood 
is  rather  that  of  seeking  to  evade  all  decisions 
and  responsibilities,  of  substituting  for  action 
fatal  facility  in  finding  excuses  for  inaction. 


54  THE   NEW  AGE 

Xor  is  it  only  wearied  or  enfeebled  will  that 
tends  to  reaction.  The  world-situation  is  so 
complex,  its  evils  so  threatening,  and  its  prob- 
lems and  tasks  so  overwhelming,  that  men 
naturally  distrust  their  own  insights  and  fear 
new  and  untried  ways.  Who  shall  declare,  for 
example,  the  real  significance  of  the  Russian 
revolution  and  the  Bolshevist  movement  ?  Who 
shall  lay  the  foundations  in  righteousness  of  a 
Balkan  settlement?  Who  shall  point  the  sure 
way  to  industrial  righteousness  and  peace? 
Who,  in  short,  knows  the  road  to  that  diviner 
world  for  which  we  really  fought  this  war? 
Not  only  our  paralysis  of  will,  but  our  igno- 
rance, too,  thus  tends  to  reaction — to  a  choice 
of  familiar  goods,  of  lesser  value  than  of  the 
greater  goods  of  a  new  and  unknown  world. 

2.  Naturally  this  tendency  to  reaction  which 
besets  us  all  is  much  accentuated  in  those 
classes  zvho  had  a  privileged  lot  in  the  pre-war 
order.  Many  of  those,  thus  privileged,  are 
honestly  blind  to  the  realities  of  the  situation. 
They  have  asked  themselves  no  searching 
questions  as  to  unearned  special  privileges. 
They  truly  believe  that  they  are  the  most  im- 
portant people,  and  best  fitted  to  control,  and 
that  they  constitute  the  bulwarks  of  civilization 
against  the  threatening  tide  of  Bolshevism. 
Their  reactionism  is  blind  but  honest  and  in- 


ITS   PERILS  55 

dignant.  It  is  all  the  more  dangerous  on  that 
account. 

3.  But  reaction  has  its  chief  support  in 
human  selfishness — class  selfishness,  partisan 
selfishness,  and  national  selfishness;  though 
selfishness  of  another  kind  may  also  lead  to 
revolution. 

Class  selfishness  leads  to  reaction,  when  the 
class  has  especially  benefited  by  the  old  order. 
It  wants  to  retain  its  old  position  of  privilege. 
It  deliberately  uses  the  fears  of  mob  rule  to 
maintain  its  own  rule.  It  stands  for  no  true 
democracy,  and  so  does  not  hesitate  in  time  of 
peace  to  violate  the  freedom  of  the  people  by 
measures  essentially  belonging  to  war  and  of 
doubtful  warrant  even  then.  Such  class-selfish 
reactionaries  inevitably  sow  the  seed  of  the 
very  revolution  they  profess  to  fear. 

Partisan  selfishness,  too,  is  capable  of  great 
treacheries  both  to  the  nation  and  to  the  world. 
Few  more  shameful  exhibitions  of  such  selfish- 
ness have  been  seen  than  in  America  in  recent 
months.  The  whole  blame  does  not  belong  to 
any  one  party.  Both  parties  have  shown  a 
willingness  to  sacrifice  world  interests  unspeak- 
ably precious,  rather  than  that  the  other  party 
should  share  in  the  credit  of  large  achievement. 
It  is  hardly  open  to  doubt  that  vastly  greater 
results,   in  line  with  America's  aims  in  this 


56  THE  NEW  AGE 

war,  could  have  been  achieved  in  Paris,  if  our 
conferees  could  have  had  behind  them  a  united 
nation.  All  too  largely  the  party  leaders  have 
cared  for  nothing  but  their  own  control.  Their 
general  attitude,  as  reflected  in  the  Senate, 
has  been  thoroughly  reactionary.  They  have 
shown  no  willingness  honestly  to  face  the  new 
issues  raised  by  the  war.  They  have  been, 
rather,  quite  ready  to  make  the  gravest  world- 
issues  a  football  of  party  politics,  and  so  basely 
to  repudiate  America's  highest  moral  achieve- 
ment— the  rare  idealism  with  which  she  came 
into  the  war.  For  they  put  their  country — 
that  had  won  highest  honour — to  black  shame 
in  the  eyes  of  all  the  nations  by  making  selfish 
national  interests  supreme,  by  advocating  self- 
ish and  cowardly  return  to  the  old  isolation, 
and  by  so  shirking  altogether  its  fair  share  in 
world  responsibilities.  Was  America's  politi- 
cal leadership  ever  more  nearly  bankrupt,  or 
she  herself  more  humiliated? 

As  to  national  selfishness,  the  discussion  of 
the  Paris  situation  should  have  already  made 
clear  how  reactionary  it  is, — how  inevitably  it 
harks  back  to  an  old  world  of  selfish  intrigue, 
and  stands  square  athwart  the  path  to  anything 
like  a  brotherhood  of  the  nations.  For  the 
Allies  were  fighting  in  the  war  against  aggres- 
sive ruthless  selfishness  in  the  Central  Powers. 


ITS  PERILS  57 

It  is  moral  stultification  to  fall  into  a  like  atti- 
tude themselves,  even  if  the  selfish  greed  is 
somewhat  modified. 

Moreover,  there  is  no  hope  of  the  new  and 
righteous  world  of  our  dreams  by  the  way  of 
national  selfishness.  That  is  a  contradiction 
in  terms.  This  war  has  made  some  demonstra- 
tions in  the  field  of  national  morals,  and  one  of 
them  is  the  demonstration  of  the  ultimate  stu- 
pidity of  national  as  well  as  of  individual  self- 
ishness. Contrast,  for  example,  America's 
present  immeasurable  loss  of  prestige  with  its 
honour  in  coming  into  the  war.  And  national 
selfishness  not  only  betrays  the  individual  na- 
tion which  cherishes  it;  it  betrays  as  well  the 
whole  brotherhood  of  nations.  Only  by  un- 
selfish cooperation  of  the  nations  on  a  gigantic 
scale  was  civilization  saved  in  this  war.  Are 
we  to  trust  national  selfishness  now  to  pre- 
serve it? 

IV 

The  Perils  of  Destructive  Revolution 
But  selfishness  may  lead  to  destructive  revo- 
lution, as  well  as  to  reaction,  and  we  must 
reckon  with  the  entirely  possible  perils  of  such 
revolution.  Class  selfishness  on  the  part  of 
the  unprivileged  may  be  as  dangerous  to  hu- 
man progress  through  destructive  revolution 


58  THE  NEW  AGE 

as  class  selfishness  on  the  part  of  the  privileged 
through  sheer  reaction. 

The  rule  of  no  one  class — privileged  or  un- 
privileged— is  democracy.  For  such  class  rule 
is  neither  just  to  all  the  people,  nor  even  good 
for  the  ruling  class  itself.  Professor  Rausch- 
enbusch  points  out  in  a  striking  passage  the  in- 
evitable tragedy  of  swollen  fortunes:  [Chris- 
tianizing the  Social  Order,  p.  309.] 

The  social  order  as  it  now  is  places  its  bene- 
ficiaries in  a  position  where  they  cannot  escape 
wrong  and  unhappiness.  If  they  obey  its  laws, 
they  enrich  their  own  life,  but  at  the  expense  of 
others,  and  in  the  end  their  apparent  advantage 
turns  out  to  be  their  own  curse.  They  escape 
from  the  necessity  of  work,  but  in  time  idleness 
undoes  either  them  or  their  descendants.  Their 
wealth  seems  to  promise  large  means  of  doing 
good,  but  they  find  their  philanthropy  a  heavy 
burden  on  themselves  and  a  questionable  blessing 
for  others.  Their  money  gives  them  power,  but 
that  power  is  an  intoxicant  that  undermines  their 
sense  of  human  values.  It  piles  up  their  pleas- 
ures, but  the  more  they  surfeit,  the  less  pleasure 
do  they  feel.  It  offers  them  free  scope  for  their 
intellectual  life,  but  it  rusts  the  mainspring  of 
their  intellect.  It  holds  out  happiness  for  their 
families,  and  does  its  best  to  ruin  them.  It  as- 
sures them  of  security,  and  makes  them  camp 
among  enemies.  It  increases  their  sense  of 
strength  by  surrounding  them  with  inferiors,  and 


ITS  PERILS  59 

thereby  relaxes  their  virility.  It  forces  leader- 
ship on  them,  and  yet  chills  the  love  of  the  people 
which  is  the  condition  of  all  leadership.  It  seems 
to  win  all  the  powers  of  this  world  to  their  side, 
but  it  puts  them  on  the  wrong  side  in  the  final 
verdict  of  God,  of  humanity,  and  of  their  own 
souis.     That  is  the  tragedy  of  Dives. 

If  the  privileged  class  have  their  "  tragedy 
of  Dives,"  which  they  cannot  escape,  we  may 
be  sure  that  the  rule  of  the  proletariat  would 
have  another  tragedy  of  its  owui.  For  if  there 
are  any  moral  laws  at  all,  selfishness,  wherever 
found,  carries  in  itself  a  seed  of  death.  So 
that  a  purely  class-selfish  revolution  would 
finally  betray  its  own  creators.  But  the  way 
to  its  overthrow  might  be  a  long  and  bloody 
way. 

The  best  and  only  final  defense  against  a 
destructive  revolution — it  behooves  us  all  to 
remember — is  not  force,  never  force,  but  thor- 
oughgoing justice  to  all  men,  with  whatever 
radical  changes  in  all  our  theories  and  systems 
that  may  be  found  ultimately  to  involve.  We 
should  all  be  getting  ready  for  a  far  more 
radical  democracy  than  the  world  has  yet  seen ; 
— especially  those  of  us  who  have  been  among 
the  more  favoured  in  our  present  social  order. 
For,  as  Kidd  long  ago  pointed  out  in  his  Social 
Bvolution,  two  things  make  for  social  prog- 


6o  THE  NEW  AGE 

ress  in  the  history  of  the  race:  the  growing 
power  of  the  unprivileged  classes  to  seize  some 
juster  share  in  the  advantages  of  the  commu- 
nity; and  the  growing  conviction,  on  the  part 
of  the  privileged,  that  they  themselves  are  not 
justly  entitled  to  the  measure  of  privilege  they 
have  had.  Both  these  causes  are  now  at  work, 
and  the  war  has  definitely  increased  both.  We 
have  to  reckon  with  that  situation. 

In  the  first  place,  the  war  has  demonstrated 
as  never  before  the  worth  and  the  power  of  the 
common  man  of  every  race.  In  common  jus- 
tice he  has  earned  new  rights.  It  is  well  for 
society  not  to  forget  these  facts.  As  Professor 
Ward  puts  it: 

The  growing  power  of  the  working  class  is 
beyond  dispute  the  outstanding  fact  in  human 
relationships.  The  question  now  is  whether  this 
self-conscious,  self-dependent  working  class  is 
going  to  seek  only  freedom  and  power  for  itself, 
or  whether  it  will  seek  the  emancipation  and 
development  of  all  humanity. 

In  the  second  place,  the  war  has  forced  many 
questions  concerning  the  righteousness  of  our 
present  social  order  upon  the  consciousness  of 
many  of  us  who  are  more  or  less  favoured  by 
that  order.  We  may  not  feel  ourselves  very 
wise  in  the  economic  field,  but  we  cannot  per- 


ITS   PERILS  6l 

suade  ourselves  of  the  decent  justice  of  much 
that  now  is.  The  inequaHties  of  every  kind 
are  too  drastic.  They  mock  us  at  every  hand. 
Take,  for  example,  the  single  fact  that,  before 
the  war,  more  than  one-half  of  the  families  of 
the  United  States  had  a  yearly  income  of  only 
$800,  or  less.  It  is  not  a  question  of  individ- 
uals, but  of  a  system  in  which  we  are  all  in- 
volved. One  of  our  most  thoughtful  students 
of  the  social  order  thus  expresses  his  own  sense 
of  the  gravity  of  the  situation  at  this  point: 

The  capitalist  order  has  yet  to  face  the  con- 
science of  mankind  when  the  common  intelligence 
has  fully  grasped  the  significance  of  the  fact  that 
in  every  nation  war  profits  far  exceeded  those  of 
peace,  that  the  war  occasioned  the  greatest  in- 
crease of  private  fortunes  ever  known.  This  fact 
fully  reveals  the  moral  nature  of  a  system  which 
makes  profits  even  out  of  death  and  dishonour, 
which  capitalizes  the  supreme  tragedy  of  the 
world  as  it  capitalizes  its  laughter  and  its  joy, 
which  proposes  to  draw  interest  forever  on  the 
millions  of  youth  who  now  lie  in  the  battle-fields 
of  Europe  when  they  might  be  helping  to  make 
a  new  world. 

Along  with  this  fact  must  be  put  another.  Of 
the  several  forces  which  operated  to  defeat  the 
hope  of  those  who  saw  a  new  international  order 
coming  out  of  the  war,  not  the  least  was  the 
unconscious   influence   of   the   present    financial 


62  THE  NEW  AGE 

system  and  the  actual  intrigues  of  its  chief  manip- 
ulators and  beneficiaries.  On  the  one  hand  was 
the  predatory  attitude  of  nations  whose  economic 
life  is  organized  around  the  principle  of  aggres- 
sion, whose  leaders  were  face  to  face  with  the 
necessity  of  answering  to  the  common  people 
for  the  promises  they  had  made  concerning  the 
benefits  to  be  derived  from  victory.  On  the  other 
hand  was  the  need  of  collecting  the  interest  on 
international  debts  and  maintaining  the  sanctity 
of  the  right  of  the  money  lender  to  have  his 
pound  of  flesh.  To  these  two  necessities  the 
interests  of  humanity  were  sacrificed.  [Ward, 
The  New  Social  Order,  p.  367.] 

The  adequate  solution  here  is  not  easy  to 
find;  but  we  can  be  perfectly  certain  that  sim- 
ply going  on  in  the  age-long  conventional  way 
to  add  to  the  burdens  of  the  masses  of  the 
people  is  no  solution  at  all,  and  only  invites 
revolution. 


LECTURE  III 
THE  NEW  AGE:  ITS  VALUES 


LECTURE  III 

THE  NEW  AGE:   ITS   VALUES 

REAL  and  great  as  are  the  perils  which 
confront  us  in  the  new  age,  and  im- 
perative as  it  is  squarely  to  face  them, 
they  constitute,  after  all,  only  one  side  of  the 
world  situation.  For  there  are  also  great 
values  to  be  counted  upon,  and  to  be  used  to 
the  full.  And  we  may  include  under  these 
values  of  the  new  age  all  the  forces  which  may 
help  to  that  great  advance,  that  ought  to  follow 
from  the  war:  the  values  involved  in  the  out- 
standing characteristics  of  the  present  world- 
order;  the  moral  demonstrations  of  the  war, 
as  they  bear  on  the  continued  progress  of  the 
race;  and  the  most  significant  ideal  achieve- 
ments of  the  war. 

I 

The  Values  Involved  in  the  Characteristics  of 

the  Present  World-Order 

We  are  first  to  consider  the  helpful  trends 

involved  in  the  outstanding  characteristics  of 

65 


66  THE   NEW   AGE 

the  present  world-order.  Of  these  character- 
istic world  phenomena,  two — the  war's  de- 
structive use  of  modern  science,  and  the  rela- 
tively new  relentless  immoral  philosophy  of  the 
State  and  of  national  life — are  utterly  hostile 
to  a  truly  Christian  civilization,  and  have  been 
already  dealt  with. 

Three  others — world  solidarity;  the  pro- 
digiously increased  resources  of  power  and 
wealth  and  knowledge  made  possible  through 
modern  science;  and  the  forced  cooperation — 
are  ambiguous  in  their  character.  For,  as  the 
war  has  shown,  they  may  be  used  for  good  or 
evil.  They  are  problems  for  the  ideal  interests 
to  solve,  powerful  forces  to  be  mastered.  And 
yet  they  are  all  so  readily  usable  for  good  that 
they  may  be  unhesitatingly  classed  among  the 
great  helpful  trends  of  the  age. 

The  four  others  named — the  world-wide 
trend  toward  democracy  and  universal  educa- 
tion ;  the  establishment  of  a  League  of  Nations 
to  enforce  peace,  even  granting  its  limitations ; 
the  steadily  growing  internationalism ;  and  the 
deepening  sense  of  the  necessity  of  a  larger  and 
more  significant  goal  for  social  progress — we 
may  believe  will  positively  help  to  a  more 
Christian  civilization,  to  a  new  epoch  for  hu- 
manity. 

1.     First  of  all,  there  is  a  constantly  intensi- 


ITS  VALUES  67 

fying  world  solidarity.  Men  are  called  to  live 
a  world-life  as  never  before,  for  the  world  is 
increasingly  one.  Improved  methods  of  trans- 
portation and  communication — no  one  of  them 
more  than  one  hundred  years  old — have  in- 
sured it.  We  are  habituated  to  migrations, 
compared  to  which  great  historic  racial  migra- 
tions were  insignificant.  The  races  are  min- 
gled in  a  way  that  intensifies  all  race  problems. 
The  spread  of  Western  civilization  all  over  the 
world  has  forced  in  no  small  degree  both  a 
commercial  and  an  intellectual  solidarity, 
bringing  everywhere  the  challenge  of  the  scien- 
tific spirit  and  of  some  measure  of  the  social 
consciousness.  The  press  is  making  men  at 
remote  distances  think  and  feel  together. 
Wireless  telegraphy  and  wireless  telephony 
give  promise  of  the  day  when  all  men  shall  be 
in  touch  with  one  another  the  world  over. 
Life  has  a  complexity  of  relations  not  to  be 
escaped. 

The  war  so  demonstrated  this  solidarity  of 
the  world  as  to  have  compelled  America  to 
abandon  its  settled  policy  of  isolated  neutrality, 
and  to  champion  the  cause  of  the  Allies  in  its 
larger  aspects  as  unmistakably  its  own  cause. 

This  growing  solidarity,  too,  and  the  sense 
of  it  have  been  greatly  intensified  by  the  events 
of  the  war.     The  war  has  proved  the  oneness 


68  THE  NEW  AGE 

of  the  earth's  life.  We  cannot  escape  it,  try 
as  we  will.  Henceforth,  nothing  significant 
can  occur  anywhere  and  not  affect  the  whole 
world.  From  now  on  all  peoples  are  visibly 
members  one  of  another. 

While  this  gives  immense  possible  power  to 
the  forces  of  evil,  it  gives  a  like  power  to  the 
forces  of  good,  and  the  consciousness  of  soli- 
darity can  hardly  help  sobering  the  passion  of 
selfishness,  and  the  closer  fellowship  involved 
can  hardly  help  creating  a  better  understanding 
among  the  nations.  Now,  if  this  solidarity  of 
the  world  is  mastered  by  the  forces  of  right- 
eousness, then  we  may  look  forward  to  a  life 
larger,  more  complex,  richer,  more  significant 
than  men  have  ever  yet  known, — a  life  to 
which  all  races  and  nations  shall  contribute 
their  best.  For,  of  that  new  City  of  God,  it 
could  then  be  truly  said:  "They  shall  bring 
the  glory  and  honour  of  the  nations  into  it." 
For  such  a  mastered  and  glorified  world-soli- 
darity we  may  hope:  for  it  we  must  be  ready. 

2.  In  the  second  place,  through  the  growth 
of  modern  science,  there  has  been  in  the  last 
century  a  prodigious  increase  in  the  world's 
resources  of  pozuer  and  wealth  and  knozvledge, 
constituting  again  a  great  challenge  to  the 
moral  and  religious  forces.  That  these  re- 
sources were  far  greater  than  men  thought. 


ITS  VALUES  69 

and  that  they  can  be  used  for  the  most  hideous 
wrong,  this  war  clearly  demonstrated.  And  it 
was  not  less  a  demonstration,  that  unless  civ- 
ilization itself  is  to  come  to  an  end  the  world 
must  learn  to  bring  these  resources  under 
moral  control.  The  very  power  of  these  re- 
sources both  for  good  and  evil  forced  the  war 
upon  the  race,  and  its  issues  will  not  be  finally 
settled  except  through  a  reassertion  of  the 
.moral  mastery  of  all  resources  and  forces.  To 
be  true  to  that  requirement  will  demand  stern 
self-judgment  on  the  part  of  all  the  nations. 

Yet  modern  science  has  enormous  help  to 
offer  to  the  forces  of  righteousness  through  the 
wealth  and  power  made  available  by  its  pro- 
gressive conquest  over  nature,  and  especially 
through  the  application  of  the  scientific  spirit 
and  method  in  both  world-wide  and  intensified 
and  concentrated  surveys  for  the  sake  of  the 
social,  moral  and  religious  progress  of  the  race. 
For  good  intention,  moral  indignation  and  so- 
cial passion,  imperative  as  they  are,  in  them- 
selves solve  nothing.  In  complex  and  difficult 
times  like  these  we  need  a  conscience  enlight- 
ened as  well  as  sensitive;  a  will  that  not  only 
means  well  but  is  willing  patiently  to  study  and 
obey  the  laws  of  the  universe  of  God  in  which 
we  are  called  to  realize  our  righteous  purposes. 

3.     In  the  third  place,  forced  scientific  co- 


70  THE  NEW  AGE 

operation  and  organization,  already  becoming 
characteristic  of  the  world-order  before  the 
war,  were  during  the  war  carried  out  on  a 
scale  and  to  a  degree  never  before  seen.  The 
very  solidarity  of  the  world  implies  it.  The 
exigencies  of  the  war  forced  cooperation  to  a 
far  greater  extent,  both  on  the  individual  bel- 
ligerents and  on  groups  of  belligerents.  The 
degree  to  which  we  must  cooperate,  whether 
we  will  or  no,  was  to  be  seen,  too,  in  the  way 
in  which  the  belligerents  even  in  war  applied 
the  results  of  the  scientific  work  of  their  ene- 
mies. And  the  lessons  of  the  war  are  certain 
to  compel  on  the  part  of  individual  nations,  in 
the  stern  conditions  following  the  war,  rational 
co-working  on  a  scale  never  before  prevailing 
in  times  of  peace. 

There  has  even  occurred  what  Mr.  Wells 
has  called  "  a  demilitarization  of  war."  The 
dependence  in  the  war  upon  engineers  of  every 
sort,  upon  railroad  operators  and  commercial 
organizers  and  food  directors  and  providers  is 
all  evidence  of  this  demilitarization.  This 
seems  to  promise  for  the  future  "  not  so  much 
the  conversion  of  men  into  soldiers  as  the  so- 
cialization of  the  economic  organization  of  the 
country  with  a  view  to  both  national  and  inter- 
national necessities.  We  do  not  want  to  turn 
a  chemist  or  a  photographer  into  a  little  figure 


ITS  VALUES  71 

like  a  lead  soldier,  moving  mechanically  at  the 
word  of  command,  but  we  do  want  to  make  his 
chemistry  or  photography  swiftly  available  if 
the  national  organization  is  called  upon  to 
fight.  We  have  discovered  that  the  modern 
economic  organization  is  in  itself  a  fighting 
machine."  This  has  a  real  element  of  encour- 
agement in  it,  for  it  suggests  that  where  the 
needs  of  peace  are  completely  provided  for 
there  is  already  comparative  preparedness  for 
the  necessities  of  war. 

4.  A  fourth  characteristic  of  this  changing 
world-order  is  the  unmistakable  almost  world- 
wide trend  tozvard  democracy  and  universal 
education.  Every  nation,  even  in  Asia,  except 
Afghanistan,  is  living  under  some  form  of 
constitution.  China,  with  its  immense  terri- 
tory and  population,  has  become  republican, 
even  if  unstably  so.  The  Russian  revolution, 
in  spite  of  the  grave  anxieties  it  now  stirs,  was 
a  prodigious  achievement  in  itself  and  pro- 
phetic of  great  changes  elsewhere.  Even 
Japan,  which  followed  so  closely  the  Prussian 
model  in  her  government,  has  made  real  prog- 
ress toward  a  more  democratic  policy.  Of  the 
general  democratic  gains  of  the  war  Mr. 
Hoover  has  this  to  say: 

We  went  into  the  war  to  destroy  autocracy  as 


72  THE  NEW   AGE 

a  menace  to  our  own  and  all  other  democracies. 
If  we  had  not  come  into  the  war  every  inch  of 
European  soil  to-day  would  be  under  autocratic 
government.  .  .  .  Out  of  this  victory  has 
come  the  destruction  of  the  four  great  autoc- 
racies in  Germany,  Russia,  Turkey  and  Austria 
and  the  little  autocracy  in  Greece.  New  democ- 
racies have  sprung  into  being  in  Poland,  Finland, 
Letvia,  Lithuania,  Esthonia,  Czecho-Slovakia, 
Greater  Serbia,  Greece,  Siberia,  and  even  Ger- 
many and  Austria  have  established  democratic 
governments.  Beyond  these  a  host  of  small  re- 
publics, such  as  Armenia,  Georgia,  Azerbaijan 
and  others,  have  sprung  up,  and  again  as  a  result 
of  this  great  world  movement  the  constitutions 
of  Spain,  Rumania,  and  even  England,  have 
made  a  final  ascent  to  complete  franchise  and 
democracy,  although  they  still  maintain  a  symbol 
of  royalty.  .  .  .  The  world  to-day,  except 
for  a  comparatively  few  reactionary  and  com- 
munistic autocracies,  is  democratic. 

Everywhere  the  war  still  bids  fair,  with  sim- 
ple justice,  to  extend  the  suffrage  and  the 
recognition  of  the  rights  of  the  common  people 
among  all  the  belligerents.  Situations  incon- 
sistent with  an  essentially  democratic  view- 
point men  more  and  more  feel  are  not  to  be 
defended,  even  where  permitted. 

Now   this   democratic   trend   has   certainly 
been  greatly  strengthened  by  the  war,  for  the 


ITS  VALUES  73 

war  has  brought  both  a  new  sense  of  power  to 
the  common  man  himself,  and  a  new  faith  in 
him.  Both  facts  inevitably  mean  a  more  thor- 
oughgoing democracy  if  ultimate  revolution  is 
to  be  avoided.  Involved  in  this  trend  toward 
democracy,  too,  it  is  plain,  is  a  growing  empha- 
sis on  equality,  the  deep  significance  of  which 
it  is  folly  to  deny  or  to  ignore.  In  words  al- 
ready quoted,  "  the  growing  power  of  the 
working  class  is  beyond  dispute  the  outstand- 
ing fact  in  human  relationships." 

5.  The  definite  establishment  of  a  League 
of  Nations,  with  a  Covenant — whatever  its 
limitations — conceived  in  a  spirit  unmatched  in 
any  similar  political  document,  constitutes  an- 
other evidence  of  a  new  age.  For  unless  hu- 
manity is  going  insane,  it  will  find  some  way — 
in  spite  of  America's  present  opposition — to  an 
effective  league  of  nations,  to  lift  the  intoler- 
able burden  of  ever  increasing  armaments,  and 
to  put  a  stop  to  suicidal  world  conflicts.  There 
has  been,  it  seems  to  me,  an  unpardonable 
cynicism  respecting  the  League  of  Nations  on 
the  part  of  party  politicians,  and  some  idealists. 
And  the  company  in  which  the  idealists  find 
themselves  ought  to  make  them  suspect  their 
premises. 

In  the  first  place,  as  William  James  reminds 
us,  "  all  goods  are  disguised  by  the  vulgarity 


74  THE   NEW  AGE 

of  their  concomitants,  in  this  workaday 
world ;  but  woe  to  him  who  can  recognize  them 
only  when  he  thinks  them  in  their  pure  and  ab- 
stract form."  Too  many  were  demanding 
from  the  start  a  degree  of  perfection  in  the 
League  not  to  be  expected.  No  doubt  the 
treaty  knit  up  with  the  Covenant  of  the  League 
of  Nations  was  not  perfect.  I  have  already 
spoken  of  the  disillusionment  arising  from  the 
selfish  scramble  of  the  nations.  But  there  is 
another  side  to  the  matter.  The  treaty-makers 
for  the  Allies  faced  a  very  difficult  situation. 
For  all  future  world  peace,  the  treaty  must  be 
such  that  it  should  be  plain  both  to  Germany 
and  to  the  world  that  Germany  had  not 
profited  by  the  war.  And  yet  Germany  had 
deliberately  started  the  war,  had  had  no  war 
on  her  own  soil  except  in  East  Prussia,  had  in- 
vaded at  once  territory  it  had  covenanted  to 
respect,  had  carried  through  the  war  its  fearful 
doctrine  of  frightfulness,  had  viciously  waged 
a  war  intended  to  crush  Belgium  and  France 
economically,  and  had  shown  little  or  no  peni- 
tence for  any  of  these  things.  These  and  simi- 
lar facts  need  to  be  borne  In  mind,  when  men 
criticize  the  treaty. 

Moreover,  the  calling  of  the  Peace  Confer- 
ence itself  was  no  small  achievement,  and  the 
Conference  was  at  its  best  in  the  consideration 


ITS  VALUES  75 

of  the  Covenant  of  the  League.  Let  one  read 
again  that  Covenant  and  compare  it  with  any 
previous  similar  document  growing  out  of 
other  wars.  The  essential  thing  was  to  get  the 
League  started.  It  was  capable  of  amendment 
as  men  went  on  in  its  practical  use.  If  Amer- 
ica had  come  in  with  any  reasonable  reserva- 
tions, a  great  achievement  would  have  been 
possible.  With  America's  prompt  cooperation 
the  League  was  capable  of  becoming  the  one 
greatest  gain  of  the  war,  aside  from  the  simple 
military  defeat  of  the  Germans.  What  prac- 
ticable substitute  do  the  partisan  and  idealist 
opponents  of  the  League  propose?  What 
promise  is  there  in  simply  washing  our  hands 
of  Europe?  The  spirit  of  cooperation,  of 
mutual  sacrifice,  of  passionate  desire  for  per- 
manent peace,  could  all  be  carried  to  their  le- 
gitimate fulfillment  only  in  such  a  League. 
America,  it  is  to  be  feared,  will  have  much  to 
answer  for,  in  its  dire  maiming  of  the  League 
of  Nations. 

We  may  hope,  however,  that  America  will 
still  find  some  way  to  share  in  the  great  possi- 
bilities of  an  effective  League  of  Nations,  in 
line  with  the  forecast  of  the  Manchester 
Guardian : 

What   matters   far  more   than   that   America 


76  THE   NEW  AGE 

should  take  an  active  part  in  settling  the  terms 
of  peace  for  Hungary,  Bulgaria,  and  Turkey  is 
that  she  should  become  an  effective  member  of 
the  League  of  Nations  whose  task  will  be  the 
pacification  of  the  world  hereafter.  For  this  her 
cooperation,  if  not  absolutely  essential,  is  of  the 
deepest  importance,  not  so  much  because  of  her 
wealth  and  power  as  because  of  her  comparative 
disinterestedness  and  singleness  of  aim.  Nothing 
is  more  certain  than  that  the  arrangements  now 
made  or  about  to  be  made  in  Europe  and  the  Near 
East  cannot  stand.  They  have  about  them  no 
element  of  permanence,  because  they  are  based 
on  no  large  and  humane  principle.  They  are 
mainly  the  compromises  of  national  interest  and 
ambition.  It  follov^s  that  in  no  long  time  the 
whole  of  these  arrangements  will  have  to  be 
largely  revised  and  the  treaties  rewritten.  It  is 
here  that  the  cooperation  of  America  would  be 
invaluable,  and  there  is  nothing  in  her  present 
attitude  of  aloofness  which  need  prevent  her 
from  then  playing  a  free  and  powerful  part. 

As  to  the  League  itself,  we  may  w^ell  remind 
ourselves  of  Lord  Grey's  words:  "  The  success 
of  the  League  rests  with  the  people,  who  can 
make  their  Governments  what  they  will." 
Even  in  its  present  lessened  power,  we  may 
still  share  Dr.  Clifford's  joy:  "  The  League  is 
a  fact,  the  greatest  fact  of  the  hour,  and  the 
greatest  fact  history  records.  The  Tribunal  is 
created.    This  is  the  victory  for  brotherhood !  " 


ITS  VALUES  77 

6.  But  independently  of  a  League  of  Na- 
tions to  Enforce  Peace,  a  steadily  growing  in- 
ternationalism is  both  manifest  and  inevitable, 
as  developing  out  of  all  the  characteristics  of 
the  age  already  mentioned.  It  is  vain  to  at- 
tempt in  selfish  isolation  to  withstand  it.  One 
of  the  ablest  of  British  Divines  thus  sums  up 
this  growing  internationalism: 

The  international  is  the  dominating  conception 
of  the  relations  of  men  to  men.  A  new  con- 
sciousness,a  new  mind,  has  entered  the  soul  of  the 
world.  .  .  .  The  domestic  prepares  for  the 
civic  and  the  civic  for  the  national ;  and  the  na- 
tional is  on  the  way  to  the  international  and  real- 
izes itself  in  and  through  the  international. 
Brotherhood  is  like  the  air,  universal  and  unescap- 
able.  It  besets  us  behind  and  before,  and  lays  its 
quickening  and  uplifting  hand  upon  us.  The 
world  is  being  made  "  all  clear  "  for  its  march. 
"  Labour  "  has  long  been  international.  "  Peace  " 
movements  are  world-wide.  The  Temperance 
Crusade  assails  all  barriers  and  will  beat  them 
down.  The  legislators  of  different  countries  meet 
in  conference  to  harmonize  laws.  Even  the 
churches  are  developing  international  relations 
and  preparing  for  world  congresses ;  and  I  cannot 
doubt  that  the  movements  for  unity  will  slough 
the  obsolete  accretions  of  the  past  and  unite  the 
religions  of  the  world  so  that  Humanity  shall 
become  one  flock  under  one  Shepherd. 


78  THE   NEW  AGE 

Bertrand  Russell  thus  emphasizes  one  par- 
ticular incentive  to  internationalism: 

The  war  has  made  it  clear  that  it  is  impossible 
to  produce  a  secure  integration  of  the  life  of  a 
single  community  while  the  relations  between 
civilized  countries  are  governed  by  aggressive- 
ness and  suspicion.  For  this  reason  any  really 
powerful  movement  of  reform  will  have  to  be  in- 
ternational. 

T.  But  the  most  notev^^orthy  evidence  of  a 
genuinely  new  age,  among  these  characteris- 
tics of  the  changing  world-order,  is  the  grow- 
ing sense  that  the  new  age  cannot  mean  simply 
a  little  better  distribution  of  things  among  men, 
but  the  taking  on  of  a  larger  and  more  signifi- 
cant goal  than  organized  humanity  have  ever 
before  cherished.  Labour  and  social  pro- 
grams, preeminently  the  British  Labour  Pro- 
gram,— in  the  very  midst  of  economic  de- 
mands— bear  witness  to  this  growing  sense, 
that  life  is  more  than  meat.  Not  only  Indi- 
viduals here  and  there  but  whole  groups  and 
classes  are  making  this  larger  claim  on  life. 
Two  typical  men — Bertrand  Russell  and  Harry 
F.  Ward — getting  at  their  problem  from  quite 
different  points  of  view,  may  be  instanced,  as 
still  both  voicing  the  instinctive  longings  of 
multitudes,  in  their  insistence  on  larger  and 


ITS  VALUES  79 

more  significant  goals  for  organized  human 
life. 

Russell  puts  the  matter  thus: 

It  is  not  only  more  material  goods  that  men 
need,  but  more  freedom,  more  self-direction,  more 
outlet  for  creativeness,  more  opportunity  for  the 
joy  of  life,  more  voluntary  cooperation,  and  less 
involuntary  subservience  to  purposes  not  their 
own.  All  these  things  the  institutions  of  the  fu- 
ture must  help  to  produce,  if  our  increase  of 
knowledge  and  pov^^er  over  Nature  is  to  bear  its 
full  fruit  in  bringing  about  a  good  life. 

And  he  strikes  a  still  deeper  note,  when  he 
writes: 

Life  devoted  only  to  life  is  animal,  without 
any  real  human  value,  incapable  of  preserving 
men  permanently  from  weariness  and  the  feeling 
that  all  is  vanity.  If  life  is  to  be  fully  human  it 
must  serve  some  end  which  seems,  in  some  sense, 
outside  human  life,  some  end  which  is  impersonal 
and  above  mankind,  such  as  God  or  truth  or 
beauty. 

Professor  Ward  almost  summarizes  his  whole 
treatment  of  The  New  Social  Order,  in  his 
similar  expression  of  the  goal  of  social  activity: 

It  is  becoming  manifest  that  the  development 
of  personality  is  to  supersede  the  acquisition  of 
goods  as  the  goal  of  social  activity,  and  that  the 


8o  THE  NEW  AGE 

fullest  development  of  personality  is  to  be  found 
in  the  effort  to  realize  the  solidarity  of  the  human 
family. 

These  statements  of  both  men — we  shall 
later  see — are  fundamentally  in  harmony  with 
that  basic  and  supreme  principle  of  reverence 
for  personality  which  is  both  psychologically 
and  religiously  grounded  and  a  natural  guiding 
principle  in  our  inquiry. 

II 

The  Help  of  the  Moral  Demonstrations  of 
the  War 

From  these  values  involved  in  the  outstand- 
ing characteristics  of  the  present  world-order, 
we  turn  to  the  help  that  may  come  from  the 
moral  demonstrations  of  the  war  as  they  bear 
on  the  continued  progress  of  the  race.  After 
a  war  of  so  extraordinary  a  character,  in  the 
midst  of  days  of  such  significance  as  these 
after-the-war  days,  no  thoughtful  man  can 
help  asking:  ''*'  What  has  this  most  terrible  of 
wars  taught  us? "  Some  things  have  been 
demonstrated  as  by  the  finger  of  God  Himself. 

First  of  all,  the  war  has  demonstrated  that 
we  7nust  get  rid  of  sliaUozv  views  of  progress, 
of  creed,  and  of  morals. 

We  must  get  rid  of  shallozu  viezvs  of  prog- 
ress.    If  anything  has  been  made  plain  in  the 


ITS  VALUES  8 1 

anguish  of  this  world  experience,  it  is  that 
progress  will  not  take  care  of  itself.  The 
Victorian  generation,  in  its  enthusiasm  over 
the  new  outlook  upon  the  universe  afforded  by 
the  theory  of  evolution,  not  unnaturally  and 
more  or  less  unconsciously  assumed  that  evolu- 
tion carried  progress  necessarily  with  it. 

But  when  one  makes  clear  to  himself  how 
nearly  Germany  came  to,  at  least,  an  immedi- 
ate success;  and  how  terrible  was  the  strain 
upon  the  whole  of  Western  civilization  in  meet- 
ing through  these  years  the  German  onset,  he 
does  not  need  to  be  told  that  progress  is  not  a 
thing  to  be  left  to  the  inevitable  course  of 
events;  that  the  very  meaning  of  human  his- 
tory is  that  the  attitude  of  men  themselves  is 
the  decisive  factor  in  all  worth-while  progress ; 
that  progress  worthy  of  the  race  requires  the 
steady  loyalty  of  truth-loving,  freedom-loving 
men  and  women,  who  forever  and  forever  are 
"  staying  on  the  job." 

Any  progress  worthy  of  the  name,  we  may 
never  forget,  involves  great  moral  conditions, 
and  there  is  no  evading  of  these  laws  of  the 
universe.  The  man  or  the  nation  who  will  not 
fulfill  these  great  moral  conditions  will  find 
himself  fighting  against  the  universe  of  God. 
"  He  that  falleth  on  this  stone  shall  be  broken 
to  pieces;  but  on  whomsoever  it  shall  fall  it 


82  THE   NEW   AGE 

will  scatter  him  as  dust."  First  of  all,  there- 
fore, let  every  thoughtful  man  and  nation 
carry  out  of  this  war  a  deep  conviction  that 
progress  will  not  take  care  of  itself. 

And  the  war  has  been  proving  not  less  cer- 
tainly that  we  must  get  rid  of  shalloiv  viczvs  of 
creed  as  well.  For  if  we  have  been  saying  to 
ourselves,  that  it  does  not  make  much  differ- 
ence what  a  man  or  a  nation  thinks,  what  their 
theory  of  society  is,  what  philosophy  of  life 
they  hold,  that  view  surely  should  be  no  longer 
possible  for  this  generation.  For  this  war  may 
well  be  said  to  be  in  its  entirety  the  logical  re- 
sult of  the  German  philosophy  of  the  State. 
Primarily,  indeed,  we  were  not  fighting  the 
German  Government,  even  the  German  mili- 
tary povv^er;  but,  as  we  have  seen,  the  German 
philosophy  of  the  State — that  holds  that  the 
State  is  superior  to  all  moral  obligations,  that 
upon  it  lies  no  duty  of  any  kind  except  to  seek 
its  own  selfish  interests.  Belgium,  Serbia, 
Armenia  and  Russia  demonstrate  for  all  time 
the  terrible  possibilities  of  this  false  philosophy. 

It  thus  mightily  concerns  the  human  race 
what  a  nation's  creed  is,  what  theory  of  society 
it  holds,  what  philosophy  of  life  it  is  practis- 
ing. 

In  the  process  of  this  war,  too,  God  has  been 
burning  into  the  consciousness  of  this  genera- 


ITS  VALUES  83 

tion  some  elementary  and  basic  lessons  in 
morals.  We  must  get  rid  of  shalloiv  viczvs  of 
morals.  This  generation  ought  to  know,  as 
no  generation  has  ever  known,  the  true  mean- 
ing of  three  things  in  morals — selfishness,  arro- 
gance, and  falseness. 

For,  first  of  all,  if  we  have  been  saying  to 
ourselves  that  it  does  not  make  much  differ- 
ence whether  a  man  or  a  nation  is  selfish  or 
.not,  that  delusion  should  surely  now  have  van- 
ished. If  one  wants  to  know  to  what  his  own 
selfishness,  or  that  of  his  own  nation,  is  akin; 
if  he  wishes  to  know  what  selfishness — pure, 
unadulterated,  unashamed,  and  unlimited — 
truly  means;  if  he  would  see  once  for  all  the 
meanness,  the  treachery,  the  sordidness,  the 
hideousness,  the  devilishness  of  selfishness;  he 
might  have  read  it  revealed  to  every  sense  and 
faculty  of  man  on  the  very  face  of  desolated 
Belgium,  Northern  France,  and  Armenia.  For 
there  were  written  the  natural  and  inevitable 
consequences  of  a  national  selfishness  that  had 
no  scruple  and  no  thought  or  care  for  any 
other  interests  than  its  own,  and  that  gloried  in 
its  shame.  So  that  von  Tirpitz  could  say: 
"  It  must  be  stated  that  it  is  not  wrong  but 
right  that  has  been  done  in  Belgium."  So 
terrible  a  thing  is  selfishness. 

So,  too,  if  it  had  seemed  to  any  of  us  a 


84  THE  NEW  AGE 

matter  of  small  consequence  that  a  man  or  a 
nation  should  be  conceited  and  arrogant,  this 
world-war  should  forever  be  a  demonstration 
of  the  infinite  power  for  evil  which  arrogance 
possesses.  For  it  was  a  terrible  and  insensate 
pride  which  made  it  possible  for  Germany  to 
persuade  herself  that  it  was  quite  proper  and 
right  that  her  domination  should  be  absolute, 
and  the  interests  of  all  others  sacrificed  to  her. 
Desolated  Belgium  is  the  logical  result  of  such 
pride.  How  characteristic  of  the  arrogance, 
in  which,  as  Harrison  said,  the  German  people 
have  been  schooled,  is  this  statement  of 
Haeckel,  and  how  fiendish  its  applications: 
"  One  single  highly-cultured  German  warrior 
represents  a  higher  intellectual  and  moral  life- 
value  than  hundreds  of  the  raw  children  of 
nature  whom  England  and  France,  Russia,  and 
Italy  uphold  to-day." 

The  German  treatment  of  Belgium,  and  later 
of  distracted  Russia,  was,  once  more,  a  moral 
demonstration  not  only  of  the  falseness  and 
utter  untrustworthiness  of  the  German  Gov- 
ernment, but  also  of  the  inevitable  logical  con- 
sequences of  such  falseness  in  its  effect  on  the 
relations  of  men  to  each  other.  The  long  un- 
broken record  of  unexampled  cruelty  in  Bel- 
gium is  the  direct  result  of  the  refusal  of  a 
great  nation  to  count  its  plighted  word  as  of 


ITS  VALUES  85 

any  value.  No  decent  civilization  is  possible 
without  truth  and  trust  between  men  and  be- 
tween nations. 

Let  all  men  and  all  nations  take  it  to  heart 
that  German  selfishness,  German  arrogance, 
and  German  falseness  bore  their  inevitable 
fruit  in  this  hell  let  loose  upon  earth,  not  be- 
cause they  were  German,  but  because  they  were 
exactly  what  they  were — selfishness,  arrogance, 
and  falseness.  It  was  precisely  against  these 
that  Christ  set  Himself.  No  sound  life  in 
any  nation  or  group  of  nations  can  be  built 
upon  that  foundation.  "  The  healing  of  the 
nations  "  can  lie  only  in  unselfish  good-will,  in 
willingness  to  learn  and  to  serve,  in  utter  truth. 
This  has  been  demonstrated. 

2.  The  grip  of  tJic  laws  of  God  upon 
Nations. 

This  necessity  for  getting  rid  of  shallow 
views  of  progress,  of  creed,  and  of  morals  has 
only  given  illustrations  of  another  of  the  out- 
standing demonstrations  of  the  war — the  in- 
escapable grip  of  the  laws  of  God  upon  the  life 
of  nations  as  well  as  of  individuals.  For  in 
all  the  inevitable  connections  of  progress,  of 
creed,  and  of  morals,  is  to  be  seen  the  grip  of 
God's  laws. 

If  it  seemed  to  us  at  any  time  in  this  world- 
strife  that  God  had  forgotten  the  world,  and 


86  THE  NEW  AGE 

left  the  powers  of  evil  to  conquer,  we  might 
have  laid  aside  all  such  fears.  For  God,  we 
may  be  sure,  is  in  the  very  laws  of  His  uni- 
verse, and  constantly  working  through  them  to 
the  accomplishment  of  His  great  aims.  Wher- 
ever there  has  been  violation  of  the  funda- 
mental laws  of  the  universe,  there  penalty  has 
fallen  and  will  still  fall.  No  man,  no  nation 
can  finally  evade  or  trick  the  laws  of  the  uni- 
verse. As  surely  as  the  farmer  cannot  cheat 
the  soil,  so  surely  every  man,  every  class,  every 
nation  will  reap  according  to  the  sowing.  And 
if  it  seemed  to  any  of  us  in  the  war  that  Ger- 
many was  too  often  having  it  all  her  own  way, 
we  may  be  perfectly  certain  that  Germany's 
own  record  in  this  war  is,  on  the  contrary,  an 
unmistakable  demonstration  of  the  grip  of  the 
laws  of  God  upon  the  life  of  nations. 

Twenty-five  years  ago,  in  spite  of  factors  in 
her  life,  which  men  could  not  approve,  and 
partly  misled  by  the  German  propaganda  it- 
self, thousands  of  men  of  all  nations  were  turn- 
ing to  Germany  for  education,  and  were  giving 
to  Germany  an  admiration  and  even  an  affec- 
tion beyond  her  real  desert.  Men  were  ready 
to  recognize  in  her  the  educational,  scientific, 
and  musical  leader  of  the  world.  Is  it  a  good 
thing  for  her  that  in  this  war,  and  in  the  long 
preparation  for  it,  she  put  her  admirers  and 


ITS  VALUES  87 

lovers  to  shame,  and  did  all  that  the  most  fiend- 
ish ingenuity  could  devise  to  drive  out  of  their 
hearts  every  last  bit  of  admiration  and  love  ? 

Well  might  one,  whose  lines  show  that  he 
has  both  known  and  loved  his  Germany,  and 
must  hope  that  she  will  return  to  sanity  and  to 
her  own  best  self,  write  in  Punch  of  "A  Lost 
Land  "— 

A  childhood  land  of  mountain  ways. 
Where  earthy  gnomes  and  forest  fays, 
Kind,  foolish  giants,  gentle  bears, 
Sport  with  the  peasant  as  he  fares 
Affrighted  through  the  forest  glades, 
And  lead  sweet,  wistful  little  maids 
Lost  in  the  woods,  forlorn,  alone. 
To  princely  lovers  and  a  throne. 

:<:  9|:  ^  H:  :(:  :|< 

Dear  haunted  land  of  gorge  and  glen. 
Ah,  me !  the  dreams,  the  dreams  of  men ! 

A  learned  land  of  wise  old  books 
And  men  with  meditative  looks. 
Who  move  in  quaint  red-gabled  towns 
And  sit  in  gravely  folded  gowns, 
Divining  in  deep-laden  speech 
The  world's  supreme  arcana — each 
A  homely  god  to  listening  Youth 
Eager  to  tear  the  veil  of  Truth  ; 

Mild  votaries  of  book  and  pen — 
Alas,  the  dreams,  the  dreams  of  men ! 


88  THE  NEW  AGE 

A  music  land,  whose  life  is  wrought 
In  movements  of  melodious  thought; 
In  symphony,  great  wave  on  wave — 
Or  fugue,  elusive,  swift,  and  grave; 
A  singing  land,  whose  lyric  rimes 
Float  on  the  air  like  village  chimes; 
Music  and  verse — the  deepest  part 
Of  a  whole  nation's  thinking  heart! 

******* 
Oh  land  of  Now,  oh  land  of  then ! 
Dear  God !  the  dreams,  the  dreams  of  men ! 

Slave  nation  in  a  land  of  hate, 
Where  are  the  things  that  made  you  great? 
Child-hearted  once — oh,  deep  defiled, 
Dare  you  look  now  upon  a  child? 
Your  lore — a  hideous  mask  wherein 
Self-worship  hides  its  monstrous  sin; 
Music  and  verse,  divinely  wed — 
How  can  these  live  where  love  is  dead? 
******* 

Oh,  depths  beneath  sweet  human  ken, 
God  help  the  dreams,  the  dreams  of  men  ! 

How  dire  is  Germany's  loss  at  this  point  is 
vividly  suggested  by  the  words  of  Mr.  Otto 
Kahn,  the  well-known  Jewish  banker  of  New 
York,  to  German-born  citizens  in  the  United 
States — 

We  men  of  German  descent  have  a  special 
reckoning  to  make  with  Kaiserism.  The  world 
has    been   wronged   and   hurt   by    Prussianized 


ITS  VALUES  89 

Germany  as  it  was  never  wronged  and  hurt  be- 
fore. But  the  deepest  hurt  of  all  is  that  which 
has  been  done  to  us.  Our  spiritual  inheritance 
has  been  stolen,  wrenched  from  us  by  impious 
hands  and  thrown  in  the  gutter.  The  ideals  and 
traditions  we  cherished  have  been  foully  be- 
smirched; our  blood  has  been  dishonoured;  we 
have  been  bitterly  shamed  by  our  kith  and  kin. 
The  land  to  which  we  were  linked  by  fond  mem- 
ories has  become  an  outcast  among  the  nations, 
convicted  of  high  treason  against  civilization 
and  of  unspeakable  crimes  against  humanity. 

Has  ever  nation  known  such  moral  isolation 
as  is  now  hers?  The  completeness  of  her  col- 
lapse and  of  her  present  disintegration  is  the 
inevitable  penalty  of  violation  of  eternal  moral 
laws. 

Ill 

The  Greatest  Ideal  Achievements  of  the  War 
When  one  is  thinking  of  the  moral  demon- 
strations of  the  war,  and  of  the  great  values, 
which  must  be  carried  on  into  the  new  age,  he 
certainly  may  not  leave  out  of  account  its 
greatest  ideal  achievements  which  may  be  said, 
I  think,  to  lie  these — the  rare  idealism  with 
which  America  came  into  the  war ;  men's  deep- 
ening conviction  of  the  supremacy  of  the  in- 
tangible values;  voluntary  cooperation  in  a 
great  cause  on  an  unheard-of  scale;  the  largest 


go  THE  NEW  AGE 

measure  of  the  spirit  of  sacrifice  the  world  has 
ever  seen ;  and  the  resulting  new  revelation  of 
common  men. 

1.  I  have  already  spoken  of  the  rare  ideal- 
ism with  zvhich  America  came  into  the  war  as 
one  of  the  causes  of  the  disillusionment  that 
later  befell.  But  here  I  remind  you  of  it  as 
the  highest  accomplishment  of  our  national 
history  and  a  perpetual  challenge  to  us  for  the 
years  to  come  to  be  true  to  our  own  best  vision. 

It  is  no  jingoist  but  a  sober  American  his- 
torical scholar  who  wrote: 

After  all  did  a  nation  ever  before  in  the  world's 
history  enter  a  conflict  only  because  it  loathed 
the  principles  and  despised  the  conduct  of  another 
nation — solely  because  of  moral  indignation? 

And  Mr.  Balfour  called  our  entry  into  the  war, 
"  the  most  magnanimous  and  generous  act  in 
history."  Bergson  bore  personal  testimony  to 
the  spirit  shown  in  America  at  that  time: 

Yes,  I  was  a  witness  of  this  spectacle  unique  in 
history,  a  people  of  nearly  a  hundred  millions  of 
souls  throwing  themselves  into  the  war  with  all 
their  forces,  all  their  resources,  consenting  in 
advance  to  every  sacrifice,  doing  this,  be  it  under- 
stood, entirely  without  any  impulsion  of  self- 
defense,  for  there  were  hardly  a  thousand  per- 


ITS  VALUES  91 

sons  in  the  United  States,  five  hundred,  even,  who 
would  admit  that  Germany  might  be  a  danger  for 
the  United  States.  Moreover,  this  was  done  en- 
tirely without  the  impulse  due  to  material  ad- 
vantage, for  from  the  outset  the  Americans  re- 
fused all  compensation,  and  one  of  their  generals 
said  to  me  last  year,  "  We  will  return  with  empty 
hands,  taking  with  us  only  our  dead."  They 
came  with  no  designing  aim,  stirred  neither  by 
interest  nor  fear,  but  by  a  principle,  by  an  idea, 
by  the  thought  of  the  mission  they  were  called 
upon  to  fulfill  in  the  world.  I  was  there,  and  I 
saw  the  rising  of  that  great  tide  of  almost  re- 
ligious emotion  which  bore  away  the  American 
people."  [Henri  Bergson,  "  French  Ideals  in 
Education  and  the  American  Student "  in  The 
Living  Age,  Dec.  27,  1919.] 

So  fine,  so  united  and  so  unselfish  was  our 
national  spirit  in  that  high  day  that  one  of  our 
poets  seemed  to  us  to  be  accurately  reflecting 
that  spirit  when  she  wrote: 

A  nation  goes  adventuring. 

With  heart  that  will  not  quail; 

A  nation  goes  adventuring, 
To  seek  the  Holy  Grail. 

A  nation  leaves  its  money-bags, 

Its  firesides,  safe  and  warm. 
To  ride  about  the  windy  world. 

And  keep  the  weak  from  harm. 


92  THE  NEW  AGE 

A  nation  goes  adventuring, 

With  heart  that  will  not  quail, 

God  grant  it,  on  some  hard-won  dawn, 
Sight  of  the  Holy  Grail. 

["  America,  1917-1918,"  by  Mary  Carolyn 
Davies.] 

If  these  lines  seem  to  us  now  a  bit  exagger- 
ated, let  us  make  sure  that  it  is  not  because  we 
ourselves  have  fallen  away  from  the  high  spirit 
of  vi^hich  we  found  ourselves  then  capable. 
The  glory  of  that  idealism  we  must  not  fail  to 
carry  over  into  the  new  age. 

2.  A  second  of  these  great  ideal  achieve- 
ments of  the  war  was  this,  that,  in  an  age  we 
have  called  materialistic,  the  world  has  dis- 
closed a  new  and  steadily  deepening  conviction, 
on  the  part  of  men  in  all  parts  of  the  earth,  of 
the  supremacy  of  the  intangible  values.  It 
should  mean  much  to  all  believers  in  the  ideal 
that  more  millions  of  men  than  ever  before, 
under  the  tutelage  of  the  German  m.enace,  came 
clearly  to  see  that  force  and  machinery  and 
organization  and  wealth  and  even  science — all 
put  together — are  not  enough ;  that  a  man  or  a 
nation  may  have  all  these  and  still  have  no  life 
worth  living;  but,  on  the  contrary,  may  be  a 
curse  to  the  race. 

Something  like  three-fourths  of  the  popula- 
tion of  the  globe  have  been  knit  up  in  some 


ITS  VALUES  93 

fashion  with  the  cause  of  the  Allies,  not  for 
territorial  gains,  not  for  commercial  aggran- 
dizement, not  for  purposes  of  political  domina- 
tion, but  because  they  came  to  see  as  never  be- 
fore that  all  possible  material  advances  with- 
out essential  liberty  do  but  furnish  forth  a 
barren  life.  This  is  the  significance  of  the 
fact  that  little  Central  American  countries  like 
Guatamala,  and  Governments  like  Cuba  and 
Liberia,  declared  themselves  for  the  Allies.  It 
became  finally  clear  to  them  that  no  material 
gains  —  such  as  Germany  counted  as  alone 
vital — can  ever  make  good  the  heritage  of  free 
men:  freedom  of  conscience,  freedom  of  wor- 
ship, freedom  of  thought,  freedom  of  investiga- 
tion; political,  economic,  social  freedom — the 
emancipation  of  all  the  powers  of  men.  They 
awakened,  thus,  to  the  supremacy  of  the  in- 
tangible values.  They  caught  the  vision  of 
the  things  that,  though  they  be  not  seen,  are 
yet  eternal — the  supreme  and  everlasting  values 
of  faith,  of  hope,  of  love. 

This  is  a  great  racial  achievement,  and  a 
great  possible  spiritual  asset,  for  which  men 
should  be  endlessly  grateful.  In  the  degree  in 
which  that  achievement  can  be  maintained,  a 
new  day  for  the  world  will  have  dawned. 

3.  The  third  great  achievement  of  the  war 
was  that,  under  its  pressure,  the  peoples  who 


94  THE  NEW  AGE 

were  really  seeking  a  free  society  of  self-re- 
specting and  mutually-respecting  nations  were 
driven  to  such  far-reaching  cooperation  and 
companionship  in  a  great  unselfish  cause  as  the 
world  had  never  before  seen.  The  resources 
of  credit,  of  food,  of  shipping,  of  man-power 
of  three-fourths  of  the  world  were  in  large 
measure  pooled  to  establish  the  great  aims  of 
the  Allies.  Something  like  a  unified  Council 
of  all  these  peoples  was  made  possible — an 
actual  and  potent  internationalism,  a  "  super- 
nationalism  "  indeed,  that  holds  the  one  great 
promise  for  the  world's  future  peace  and 
progress. 

To  paraphrase  the  Nezv  Republic's  statement 
at  an  earlier  period  of  the  war:  We  witnessed 
the  creation  of  a  super-national  control  of  the 
world's  necessities.  The  men  who  were 
charged  with  conducting  the  war  were  com- 
pelled to  think  as  international  statesmen.  The 
old  notions  of  sovereignty  no  longer  governed 
the  facts.  Three  of  the  unifying  forces  of 
mankind  were  at  work — hunger,  danger,  and 
a  great  hope.  They  swept  into  the  scrap  heap 
the  separatist  theories  that  nations  should  be 
self-sufficing  economically,  and  absolutely  in- 
dependent politically.  A  new  and  more  power- 
ful machinery  of  internationalism  was  created. 
And  it  was  a  true  internationalism,  because  it 


ITS  VALUES  95 

dealt  not  with  dynastic  and  diplomatic  alli- 
ances, but  with  the  cooperative  control  of  those 
vital  supplies  on  which  human  life  depends. 

Cooperation  on  such  a  scale  and  for  such 
ends  may  well  send  a  thrill  through  any  man 
who  can  think,  and  certainly  opens  up  the 
vision  of  a  new  world.  For  here  was  actual- 
ized a  kind  of  "  parliament  of  man,"  a  great 
world  unity  of  the  free  nations  who  seek,  and 
must  continue  to  seek,  the  triumph  of  freedom, 
of  justice  and  of  peace  for  all  the  peoples  of 
the  entire  world. 

If  cooperation  like  this  for  great  unselfish 
aims  may  be  secured  in  time  of  war,  surely  we 
need  not  be  without  hope  even  yet  of  the  estab- 
lishment of  a  permanent  League  of  Free  Na- 
tions in  time  of  peace.  For,  as  President  Wil- 
son said,  in  presenting  to  the  Peace  Conference 
the  draft  of  the  League  of  Nations: 

It  is  not  in  contemplation  that  this  should  be 
merely  a  League  to  secure  the  peace  of  the 
world.  It  is  a  League  which  can  be  used  in  any 
international  matter.  That  is  the  significance  of 
the  provision  introduced  concerning  labour. 

Such  a  League,  as  President  Wilson  said, 
must  be  "  a  living  thing,"  growing  with  the 
growth  of  the  nations,  developing  to  meet  de- 
veloping problems — the  great  problems  of  a 


96  THE  NEW  AGE 

humane  and  scientific  control  of  production, 
distribution,  and  consumption;  the  problems  of 
leisure,  of  recreation,  of  education,  and  of  re- 
ligion, for  the  whole  race  of  men.  Here  is 
opportunity  for  men's  highest  powers  in  days 
of  peace ;  here  a  great  challenge  for  the  libera- 
tion of  human  energies  in  peaceful  outlets. 

And  here,  in  so  magnificent  an  extension  of 
cooperation  among  the  nations,  lies  the  only 
proper  outcome  for  the  immeasurable  sacrifices 
of  this  war.  This,  too,  is  a  great  racial 
achievement,  and  possible  spiritual  asset,  which 
must  be  carried  over  into  the  new  age. 

4.  And,  once  more,  the  war  demonstrated 
afresh,  on  an  unexampled  scale,  the  capacity 
of  men  for  sacrifice.  The  massive  heroism  of 
the  common  men  of  all  the  nations  has  made 
this  fact  certain.  It  is  the  simple  truth  to  say 
that  more  millions  of  men  than  ever  before  in 
the  history  of  the  world  threw  themselves  un- 
flinchingly into  the  support  of  a  great  un- 
selfish cause,  ready  for  whatever  sacrifice  that 
might  involve. 

The  very  numbers  concerned  are  an  inspira- 
tion. For  it  was  not  alone  those  who  "  went 
over  the  top  "  who  shared  in  this  sacrificial  de- 
votion. No  man  who  enlisted  with  any  sense 
of  the  issues  at  stake  could  know  what  his  en- 
listment might  involve  of  life  or  death;  and  in 


ITS  VALUES  97 

his  enlistment  he  took  his  hands  off  himself, 
and  laid  that  self  in  very  deed  upon  the  altar 
of  country  and  humanity.  In  that,  perhaps, 
half-blind  dedication  to  a  high  unselfish  cause, 
many  a  man  found  to  his  own  surprise  his  life 
become  marvellously  simple  and  free.  He  had 
not  known  before  that  sacrifice  was  the  way  to 
liberty. 

This  very  spirit  of  sacrifice  gave  to  millions 
of  men  a  new  sense  of  the  great  values  for 
which  they  fought,  and  a  new  grip  upon  them. 
They  saw  things  in  better  proportion;  the  great 
values  looming  up  as  really  great,  and  the  rela- 
tive goods  forced  back  into  their  relative 
places.  It  was  "  the  glory  of  the  trenches," 
as  Coningsby  Dawson  said,  that  they  emanci- 
pated men  from  selfishness  and  from  the  domi- 
nation of  petty  aims  and  fears — 

There's  one  person  I've  missed  since  my  return 
to  New  York.  I've  caught  glimpses  of  him  dis- 
appearing around  corners,  but  he  dodges.  I  think 
he's  a  bit  ashamed  to  meet  me.  That  person  is 
my  old  civilian  self.  What  a  full-blown  egotist 
he  used  to  be  I  How  full  of  golden  plans  for  his 
own  advancement !  How  terrified  of  failure,  of 
disease,  of  money  losses,  of  death — of  all  the 
temporary,  external,  non-essential  things  that 
have  nothing  to  do  with  the  spirit!  War  is  in 
itself  damnable — a  profligate  misuse  of  the  accu- 
mulated brainstuff  of   centuries.     Nevertheless, 


98  THE  NEW  AGE 

there's  many  a  man  who  has  no  love  of  war,  who, 
previous  to  the  war,  had  cramped  his  soul  with 
littleness,  and  was  chased  by  the  bayonet  of  duty 
into  the  blood-stained  largeness  of  the  trenches, 
who  has  learned  to  say,  "  Thank  God  for  this 
war!"  He  thanks  God  not  because  of  the  car- 
nage, but  because,  when  the  winepress  of  new 
ideals  was  being  trodden,  he  was  born  in  an  age 
when  he  could  do  his  share. 

And  some  such  emancipation,  as  came  to  the 
men  in  the  trenches,  came  in  like  manner  to 
many  soldiers  and  sailors  who  never  saw  the 
front ;  but  who  held  themselves  at  home  or 
abroad  not  less  at  their  country's  command. 
And  it  came  surely,  also,  to  those  who  waited  in 
the  homes  for  fathers  and  husbands,  and  sons 
and  brothers,  and  bore  them  on  their  heart  in 
love  and  prayer,  and  made  common  cause  with 
them.  How  inevitably  the  home  life,  too,  was 
exalted  by  the  sacrifices  of  this  war  is  sug- 
gested b)^  Miss  Rittenhouse  in  her  poem,  "  I 
Have  No  Lover  on  the  Battle-field  " — 

I  have  no  lover  on  the  battle-field, 

I  do  not  go  with  sickening  fear  at  heart, 
And  when  the  crier  calls  the  latest  horror 

I  do  not  start. 
I  have  no  lover  on  the  battle-field, 

I  am  exempt  from  terror  of  the  night, 
I  can  lie  down,  serene  and  disregarding. 

Until  the  light. 


ITS  VALUES  99 

But  on  the  battle-field  had  I  a  lover, 

How  life  would  purge  itself  of  petty  pain, 
And  what  would  matter  all  the  petty  losses. 

The  petty  gain  ? 
I  should  be  one  with  those  who  suffer  greatly. 

With  pain  all  pain  above, 
And  I  should  know  then  beyond  peradventure, 

The  heart  of  Love ! 

But  the  glory  of  the  spirit  of  sacrifice  is  not 
merely  that  it  emancipates  and  exalts  the  indi- 
vidual who  feels  it,  but  that  it  is  contagious  and 
spreads  from  soul  to  soul,  and  so  becomes 
truly  redemptive  for  other  men  also.  Mr.  J.  J. 
Chapman  had  no  doubt  his  own  brilliant  son  in 
thought,  who  died  earlier  in  the  war,  when  he 
wrote: 

The  young  men,  as  of  old,  shine  as  the  natural 
heroes  of  the  race.  Their  readiness  to  die  re- 
stores our  faith  in  human  nature.  It  reminds  us 
that  the  sacrificial  part  is  what  counts  in  the 
spread  of  truth.  This  much  we  know,  and  we 
know  little  else  about  morality  and  religion.  To 
count  the  cost  and  dwell  upon  the  life  and  prop- 
erty sacrificed  in  heroic  action  is  to  doubt  the 
value  of  truth.  To  what  better  use  could  these 
young  heroes  and  all  this  amassed  wealth  have 
been  put?    It  was  for  this  that  they  existed. 

The  spirit  of  sacrifice  not  only  involves,  thus, 
the  uplift  of  high  companionship  in  the  fulfill- 


lOO  THE   NEW  AGE 

ment  of  great  aims;  but  its  unwonted  preva- 
lence means  also  that  more  millions  of  men, 
than  ever  before  in  the  history  of  the  world, 
have  found  in  their  own  sacrificial  experience 
the  key  to  the  understanding  of  the  deepest 
message  of  religion,  of  Christianity,  of  Christ's 
own  death — the  message  of  sacrifice.  Men 
have  come  to  see  in  some  half -blind  fashion 
the  meaning  of  sacrifice ;  that  they  can  in  some 
true  sense  do  what  Hinton  long  ago  pointed 
out — make  all  their  pains  "  identify  themselves 
in  meaning,  and  end  with  the  suffering  of 
Christ."  For  when  one  turns  all  his  pains 
into  a  walling  sacrifice  to  God  and  to  men,  he 
makes  the  sacrifice  itself,  "  an  instrument  of 
joy  " — for  love  rejoices  in  sacrifices  for  love's 
sake. 

In  the  midst  of  all  the  drear  monotony  and 
drudgery  of  much  of  the  war,  in  commonplace 
tasks  that  did  not  easily  take  on  any  glamour 
or  glory  of  war,  in  mud  and  squalor  and 
wretchedness  and  disease,  every  man  still  had 
his  place  in  the  huge  sacrificial  task,  and  of- 
fered his  life  for  the  triumph  of  liberty,  of 
democracy,  of  righteousness  in  the  earth. 
Surely  that  cannot  happen  for  millions  of  men, 
and  the  world  be  not  better  worth  living  in 
hereafter.  One  does  not  wonder  that  one  of 
the  English  chaplains  was  able  to  say  that  the 


ITS  VALUES  lOI 

favourite  hymn  of  the  London  regiments,  at 
the  long  gruelHng  battle  of  the  Somme,  was 
Watts'  old  Good  Friday  hymn — 

When  I  survey  the  wondrous  cross, 
On  which  the  Prince  of  Glory  died, 

My  richest  gain  I  count  but  loss, 
And  pour  contempt  on  all  my  pride. 

Here  again  was  a  great  racial  achievement, 
and  a  great  possible  spiritual  asset,  v\-hich  above 
all  the  Christian  forces  must  make  the  very 
spirit  of  the  new  age. 

5.  Through  all  these  great  ideal  achieve- 
ments of  the  war,  already  surveyed,  another 
came, — the  resulting  neiv  revelation  of  common 
men.  For  if  millions  of  men  shared  in  that 
rare  idealism  with  which  America  entered  the 
war;  if  they  awakened  to  a  new  sense  of  the 
supremacy  of  intangible  values;  if  they  arose 
to  the  demands  of  cooperative  tasks  unmatched 
in  history;  if  they  showed  an  unlDcHevable 
capacity  for  sacrifice ;  then  in  all  this,  there  was 
involved  a  new  revelation  of  common  men,  that 
should  mean  also  a  new  faith  in  God  and  His 
universe. 

We  that  have  seen  man  broken, 
We  know  man  is  divine. 

In  the  face  of  such  scientific  terrors  as  the 


102  THE   NEW  AGE 

world  had  never  before  seen,  man's  frail, 
human  body  by  indomitable  will  held  on  its 
course.  Common  men  of  all  the  nations 
proved  themselves  capable  of  an  endurance  we 
had  hardly  thought  possible  to  men,  and  of  a 
heroism  unsurpassed  in  the  history  of  the 
world. 

Barbusse's  novel,  TJie  Fire,  was  one  of 
the  truly  great  books  the  war  gave  us.  It  is 
significant  that  it  could  be  correctly  described, 
in  the  whole  heart  and  sweep  of  it,  as  "  an 
ardent  tribute  to  the  mute,  inglorious  millions 
of  ordinary  men  constrained  to  heroism  by 
circumstances,  brave,  determined,  reliable,  but 
not  imbued  v/ith  any  military  spirit — those  mil- 
lions of  uprooted  civilians." 

Wells  counts  this  common  heroism  one  of 
the  characteristic  things  of  this  war — 

It  is  the  peculiarity  of  this  war — it  is  the  most 
reassuring  evidence  that  a  great  increase  in  gen- 
eral ability  and  critical  ability  has  been  going  on 
throughout  the  last  century — that  no  isolated 
great  personages  have  emerged.  Never  has  there 
been  so  much  ability,  invention,  inspiration, 
leadership ;  but  the  very  abundance  of  good  qual- 
ities has  prevented  our  focussing  upon  those  of 
any  one  individual.  .  .  .  It  is  not  that  the 
war  has  failed  to  produce  heroes,  so  much  as  that 
it  has  produced  heroism  in  a  torrent.    The  great 


ITS  VALUES  103 

man  of  this  war  is  the  common  man.  It  becomes 
ridiculous  to  pick  out  particular  names.  .  .  . 
The  acts  of  the  small  men  in  this  war  dwarf  all 
the  pretensions  of  the  great  men.  Imperatively 
these  multitudinous  heroes  forbid  the  setting  up 
of  effigies.  When  I  was  a  young  man  I  imitated 
Swift  and  posed  for  cynicism.  I  will  confess 
that  now,  at  fifty,  and  greatly  helped  by  this  war, 
I  have  fallen  in  love  with  mankind. 

And  this  courage  of  the  common  man  is 
ground,  as  William  Allen  White  sees,  for  a 
great  new  faith  in  democracy — 

That  courage — that  thing  which  the  Germans 
thought  was  their  special  gift  from  Heaven,  bred 
of  military  discipline,  rising  out  of  German  Kul- 
tur — we  know  now  is  the  commonest  heritage  of 
men.  It  is  the  divine  fire  burning  in  the  soul  of 
us  that  proves  the  case  for  democracy.  For  at 
base  and  underneath  we  are  all  equals.  In  crises 
the  rich  man,  the  poor  man,  the  thief,  the  harlot, 
the  preacher,  the  teacher,  the  labourer,  the  ig- 
norant, the  wise,  all  go  to  death  for  something 
that  defies  death — something  immortal  in  the 
human  spirit.  Those  truck-drivers,  those  mule- 
whackers,  those  common  soldiers,  that  doctor, 
these  college  men  on  the  ambulance,  are  brothers 
to-night  in  the  democracy  of  courage.  Upon  that 
democracy  is  the  hope  of  the  race,  for  it  bespeaks 
a  wider  and  deeper  kinship  of  men. 

So  heart-breaking  and  yet  so  inspiring  has 


I04  THE  NEW  AGE 

been  this  massive  heroism  of  the  common  rank 
and  file  of  men,  that  one  does  not  wonder  that 
it  has  begotten  a  new  rehgious  faith  and  led 
one  like  H.  G.  Wells  to  say  on  the  one  hand, 
"  Our  sons  have  shown  us  God  " ;  and  Dr. 
P.  T.  Forsyth  to  say  on  the  other  hand,  "  God 
has  shown  us  our  sons." 

Surely  it  were  a  faithless  generation  that,  in 
the  light  of  the  revelations  of  this  war,  and  in 
spite  of  all  its  sordid  and  brutal  accompani- 
ments, should  not  find  grounds  for  a  new,  great 
faith  in  common  men. 


LECTURE  IV 

THE  NEW  MIND:  THE  POLITICAL 
AND  SOCIAL  CHALLENGE 


LECTURE  IV 

THE  NEW  MIND:  THE  POLITICAL 
AND  SOCIAL  CHALLENGE 

I 

General  Introduction 

WE  have  been  considering  thus  far  the 
new  age,  its  evidence,  its  perils,  and 
its  vahies.  We  turn  now  to  con- 
sider the  new  mind  needed  for  that  new  age, 
the  challenge  which  that  new  age  brings.  That 
challenge  is  threefold — a  challenge  to  recognize 
that  we  are  in  a  new  age,  which  calls  for  radical 
readjustments,  a  challenge  to  overcome  in  posi- 
tive fashion  the  perils  of  the  age,  and  a  chal- 
lenge to  preserve  and  fulfill  the  values  of  the 
age. 

If  we  have  been  right  at  all  in  our  estimate 
of  the  significance  of  the  crisis  through  which 
the  world  has  been  ])assing,  then  it  is  not  too 
much  to  say  that  the  opportunity  for  the  great- 
est advance  the  human  race  has  ever  made  is 
still  within  our  grasp.  To  build  a  new  world 
107 


I08  THE  NEW  MIND 

according  to  the  pattern  shown  us  in  our  mount 
of  vision — that  is  the  challenge,  the  oppor- 
tunity, "  the  great  adventure,"  to  which  we  are 
committed. 

There  is  a  moving  passage  (writes  another 
[Chaplain  E.  S.  Woods  in  The  Church  in  the 
Furnace])  in  a  moving  book,  John  Masefield's 
"  Gallipoli,"  where  he  describes  how  the  final  at- 
tack at  Suvla  Bay  represented  a  kind  of  climax 
of  effort  and  opportunity,  led  up  to  by  infinite 
toil  and  sacrifice.  "  There  was  the  storm,  there 
was  the  crisis,  the  one  picked  hour,  to  which  this 
death  and  agony  ,  .  .  had  led.  Then  was 
the  hour  for  the  casting  off  of  self,  and  a  setting 
aside  of  every  pain  and  longing  and  sweet  affec- 
tion, a  giving  up  of  all  that  makes  a  man  to  the 
something  which  makes  a  race,  and  a  going  for- 
ward to  death  resolvedly  to  help  out  their  broth- 
ers high  up  above  in  the  shell-bursts  and  the 
blazing  gorse.  Which  is  a  parable  as  well  as 
history."  To  all  believers  in  the  ideal  and  lovers 
of  men,  has  come  at  last  their  "  one  picked  hour," 
their  supreme  opporiunity,  their  "  final  summons 
to  fare  forth  with  God  in  His  Great  Adventure." 

For  it  Infinitely  concerns  us  to  see  that  the 
fight  for  a  nczu  ivorld  is  not  over,  but  only  well 
begun.  This  is  no  time  to  scuttle  back  to  old 
indulgences;  it  is  no  time  for  petty,  private 
aims,  or  for  narrow,  selfish  nationalism.     For 


POLITICAL  AND  SOCIAL  CHALLENGE    109 

of  nations,  too,  as  well  as  of  individuals,  it  is 
to  be  written  in  that  new  age:  "  Whosoever 
would  be  first  among  you,  shall  be  servant  of 
all."  Germany's  tragic  failure  is  new  proof 
of  it. 

These  five  years  of  unspeakable  sacrifice 
have  laid  their  hands  in  solemn  dedication  upon 
the  heads,  especially  of  the  remaining  youth  of 
the  nations,  pledging  them  to  that  further  and 
continuous  sacrifice — which  is  also  the  measure 
of  life — that  holds  in  itself  the  promise  and 
potency  of  a  new  world.  For  this  generation 
is  challenged  to  something  far  greater  than  the 
Crusades,  far  greater  than  the  French  Revolu- 
tion— to  a  great  international  movement  that 
deliberately  takes  into  its  plans  the  entire  globe 
and  the  interests  of  the  whole  race  of  men. 

To  make  the  final  outcomes  of  this  war,  then, 
not  less  significant  than  the  process;  to  make 
the  gains  commensurate  with  the  sacrifices;  to 
keep  keen  the  sense  of  the  spiritual  issues  of  the 
war;  to  discern  and  obey  those  eternal  laws  of 
God,  which  the  war  has  once  more  thundered 
forth ;  to  carry  over  into  the  tasks  of  peace — 
personal,  national  and  international — the  great- 
est ideal  achievements  of  the  war:  the  rare 
Idealism  with  which  America  came  into  the 
war,  the  sense  of  the  supremacy  of  the  in- 
tangible values,  cooperation  on  an  unheard-of 


no  THE   NEW   MIND 

scale,  the  well-nigh  universal  spirit  of  sacrifice, 
and  the  new  revelation  of  common  men  and 
common  nations — this,  is  the  nezv  oath  of  al- 
legiance to  which  in  this  supreme  hour  of  the 
world  we  are  all  summoned.  Can  we  rise  to 
the  opportunity? 

If  we  are  truly  and  fully  to  rise  to  that  op- 
portunity, it  will  require  the  commitment  of 
the  whole  man,  and  a  many-sided  national  and 
international  response — political,  economic  and 
social  adjustment;  educational  adjustment; 
moral  and  religious  adjustment.  What  can 
political,  economic  and  social  forces  do  to  in- 
sure a  better  world  ?  What  can  education  do  ? 
What  can  the  moral  and  religious  forces  do? 
These  are  our  questions. 

We  are  to  consider,  first,  the  political, 
economic  and  social  challenge  of  our  times. 

To  knit  our  discussion  up  most  fruitfully 
with  the  considerations  already  reviewed,  and 
to  get  as  concrete  and  definite  suggestions  as 
possible  for  the  solution  of  our  world  problem, 
let  us  ask  ourselves  at  this  point  this  specific 
question:  What  practically  can  be  done  in  the 
way  of  political,  economic  or  social  changes  to 
defeat  the  perils  which  threaten  us,  and  to 
insure  to  us  the  fullest  harvest — both  economic 
and  spiritual — from  the  available  values  of  our 
time? 


POLITICAL  AND   SOCIAL   CHALLENGE    III 


The  Threatening  Perils  of  the  Nezv  Age 

The  threatening  perils  of  the  new  age  seemed 
to  us  to  be  the  perils  of  an  inevitable  inherit- 
ance of  evil  from  the  war ;  of  disillusionment, 
of  reaction,  and  of  destructive  revolution. 
There  is  obviously  no  short  and  simple  way 
of  meeting  those  perils,  and  yet  they  are  very 
real  and  very  great.  We  are  far  from  safety 
at  any  point. 

1.  The  specific  dangers  involved  in  our  evil 
inheritance  from  the  zvar  are  first  to  be  con- 
sidered. 

Here  there  are,  to  begin  with,  the  perils 
arising  from  frightful  destructiveness  in  every 
sphere  of  life  and  the  consequent  perils  of  a 
civilization  near  to  collapse.  Both  call  for 
enormous  constructive  efforts  of  every  kind, 
not  only  to  make  good  our  losses,  but  also  defi- 
nitely to  insure  a  better  civilization. 

Then  there  are  the  perils  of  the  infectious 
spread,  through  so  long  and  terrible  a  war,  of 
the  intoxication  of  power;  the  perils  of  an  al- 
most unavoidable  approximation  on  the  part  of 
the  Allies  to  the  Prussianism  they  were  fight- 
ing; and  the  resulting  perils  of  carrying  over 
into  times  of  peace  the  moods  and  methods  of 
war — in  the  ready  appeal  to  force,  the  con- 


112  THE   NEW   MIND 

tempt  for  human  life,  and  the  persistent  viola- 
tion of  the  liberties  of  a  democratic  state. 
These  all  call  for  a  new  fight  for  freedom,  and 
for  a  more  thoroughgoing  democracy  freed 
from  all  taint  of  absolutism. 

There  remain,  in  this  direct  inheritance  of 
evil  from  the  war,  the  perils  of  the  inevitable 
reaction  from  the  stress  and  strain  and  excite- 
ment of  the  war — in  wide-spread  class  selfish- 
ness, the  lure  of  indolence  and  pleasure-hunt- 
ing; and  the  perils  which  the  war  had  for  the 
inner  life  of  the  soldier.  Both  these  causes 
have  tended  to  induce  a  general  demoralization 
of  life,  naturally  to  be  expected  after  so  pro- 
found a  disturbance  of  normal  conditions,  but 
all  the  more  dangerous  on  that  account.  These 
perils  can  be  met  effectively  only  in  the  indi- 
vidual life,  backed  by  education  and  the  great 
motives  of  morals  and  religion,  though  the 
community  can  do  much  sympathetically  to 
help,  by  making  the  conditions  of  living  what 
they  ought  to  be. 

2.  As  to  the  perils  of  disillusionment,  in 
another's  words:  "  The  hope  of  a  speedy  world- 
reorganization  founded  on  international  justice 
and  peace  has  vanished ;  the  Peace  Conference 
has  given  us  neither  the  Society  of  Nations  nor 
Peace.  The  friends  of  justice  are  disappointed 
and  disheartened."     So  a  writer  in  the  New 


POLITICAL  AND   SOCIAL  CHALLENGE    II3 

Burope  sums  up  that  situation  at  Paris,  out  of 
which  came  our  present  disillusionment.  The 
perils  of  disillusionment  we  saw  are  the  perils 
of  losing  our  trust  in  one  another,  of  losing  our 
courage  and  our  fundamental  faith.  Those 
basic  perils  can  be  met  only  by  discerning  new 
grounds  of  hope  from  a  larger,  deeper  and 
more  specific  survey  of  world  conditions,  and 
from  moral  and  religious  considerations.  All 
that  we  have  reviewed  under  the  values  of  the 
new  age  has  here  its  application,  and  there  are 
other  particular  elements  of  promise  yet  to  be 
noted. 

3.  The  perils  of  reaction,  we  saw,  are  the 
perils  of  timidity,  of  physical  and  mental  in- 
dolence, of  wearied  and  enfeebled  wills,  of 
despair  of  a  forward-looking  solution — all 
abetted  everywhere  by  individual,  party,  and 
national  selfishness.  These  perils  can  be  over- 
come only  by  individual  determination;  by  dis- 
criminating education,  that  recognizes  the  need 
of  both  the  conservative  and  radical  instinct, 
but  makes  clear  the  imperative  duty  of  prog- 
ress, and  definitely  points  out  at  least  some  of 
the  steps  to  a  better  age;  and  by  a  growing 
moral  and  religious  victory  over  selfishness. 

4.  The  comprehensive  peril  of  destructive 
revolution  is  simply,  "  power  in  the  hands  of 
the  many,  wealth  in  the  hands  of  the  few." 


114  THE  NEW   MIND 

As   a   thoughtful  writer   in   the   Manchester 
Guardian  puts  it: 

I  think  the  great  mass  of  people  who  are  learn- 
ing more  and  more  to  think  and  speak  of  them- 
selves as  the  "  dispossessed,"  the  "  disinherited," 
will  refuse  much  longer  to  be  "  the  muck  round 
the  roots."  And  in  the  violence  of  their  revolt 
not  only  the  fine  flower  of  culture  but  all  chance, 
perhaps  for  several  generations,  of  decent  com- 
fort may  be  sacrificed.    What,  then,  do  we  need? 

His  own  answer  (somewhat  like  that  of  Ralph 
Adams  Cram)  is  this: 

Surely  a  new  standard  of  values.  A  power  to 
find  the  good  things  of  life  in  the  goods  of  the 
spirit,  and  in  those  forms  of  wealth  which  in- 
crease in  proportion  as  they  are  widely  diffused. 
In  short,  I  am  back  at  that  problem  which  so 
often  exercised  me  in  pre-war  days,  namely,  the 
problem  of  evangelical  poverty.  If  we  could 
make  plain  living  and  high  thinking  the  fashion, 
and  extravagant  and  self-indulgent  living  bad 
form,  how  many  of  our  problems  would  be 
solved  ? 

There  is  much  in  this  answer,  for,  as  we 
have  already  seen,  things  in  whatever  quantity 
are  not  sufficient  to  satisfy  the  life  of  man. 
But  the  best  defense,  as  we  saw,  against 
destructive   revolution  can  be  only  the  most 


POLITICAL  AND   SOCIAL  CHALLENGE     II5 

complete  justice  to  all,  whatever  that  may  re- 
quire. Without  such  essential  justice,  exhorta- 
tion to  plain  living  and  high  thinking  will  be 
taken  to  be  only  the  old  device  of  all  the  gen- 
erations to  use  religion  to  keep  the  masses  of 
men  satisfied  with  injustice. 

If,  then,  we  are  to  defeat  the  perils  of  the 
evil  inheritance  from  the  war,  of  disillusion- 
ment, of  reaction,  of  destructive  revolution, 
there  are  required:  enormous  constructive  ef- 
forts in  every  sphere ;  a  new  fight  for  freedom 
and  for  a  more  thoroughgoing  democracy ;  in- 
dividual determination,  discriminating  educa- 
tion, and  the  great  motives  of  morals  and  re- 
ligion— all  applied  at  many  points ;  wide-spread 
community  improvement  of  living  conditions; 
the  discernment  of  new  grounds  of  hope  from 
a  broader,  deeper  and  more  specific  survey  of 
world-conditions,  and  from  moral  and  religious 
considerations ;  the  doing  everywhere  of  essen- 
tial justice  in  such  economic  changes  as  will 
give  exacter  meaning  to  the  democratic  watch- 
word— liberty,  fraternity,  equality;  and  a 
growing  moral  and  religious  victory  over  hu- 
man selfishness  in  all  realms.  That  is  the 
great  task  with  which  the  perils  of  our  age 
confront  us.  This  survey  of  what  is  required 
to  overcome  the  perils  of  the  new  age  makes  it 
plain  that  nowhere  are  political  or  economic  or 


Il6  THE  NEW   MIND 

social  clianges  enough,  but  that  everywhere, 
nevertheless,  they  have  most  important  help  to 
give. 

II 

Defeating  the  Perils  of  the  Nezv  Age 
1.  Setting  aside  for  the  present  all  the 
educational  and  moral  and  religious  demands, 
let  us,  as  Americans,  get  some  glimpse  at  least 
of  what  might  he  achieved  through  political, 
economic  or  social  means  for  the  insuring  of  a 
hotter  civilization.  It  is  possible  to  give  only 
illustrations.  The  program  of  the  British  La- 
bour Party  has  peculiar  significance  for  us 
here.  For  it  suggests  more  clearly,  concretely, 
and  consistently  perhaps  than  any  other  how 
much  might  be  done  conceivably  by  political 
means  in  those  enormous  constructive  efforts 
now  called  for  in  every  sphere,  in  the  new  fight 
for  freedom  and  a  more  thoroughgoing  democ- 
racy, and  in  such  economic  changes  as  any  true 
conception  of  liberty,  fraternity  and  equality 
required.  Something  like  this  program  we 
shall  probably  ultimately  have  to  face. 
The  Party  thus  defines  its  aim : 

If  we  in  Britain  are  to  escape  from  the  decay 
of  civilization  itself  ...  we  must  ensure 
that  what  is  presently  to  be  built  up  is  a  new 
social  order,  based  not  on  fighting  but  on  frater- 


POLITICAL  AND  SOCIAL  CHALLENGE    II7 

nity;  not  on  the  competitive  struggle  for  the 
means  of  bare  Hfe,  but  on  a  deliberately  planned 
cooperation  in  production  and  distribution  for  the 
benefit  of  all  who  participate  by  hand  or  by  brain  ; 
not  on  the  utmost  possible  inequality  of  riches, 
but  on  a  systematic  approach  toward  a  healthy 
equality  of  material  circumstances  for  every  per- 
son born  into  the  world;  not  on  an  enforced  do- 
minion over  subject  nations,  subject  races,  sub- 
ject colonies,  subject  classes,  or  a  subject  sex, 
but,  in  industry  as  well  as  in  government,  on  that 
equal  freedom,  that  general  consciousness  of  con- 
sent, and  that  widest  possible  participation  in 
power,  both  economic  and  political,  which  is 
characteristic  of  democracy. 

Professor  A.  B.  Wolfe  puts  in  this  compact 
and  philosophical  form  a  corresponding  Amer- 
ican view  of  the  case  for  democracy: 

What  then  is  democracy?  Democracy  is  a 
spirit,  an  attitude,  an  insight,  a  view-point,  and 
an  ethic.  All  ethics  is  at  bottom  a  calculus  of 
ends  and  means.  The  fundamental  meaning  of 
democracy  must  be  ethical,  not  political.  Thus 
understood,  democracy  holds  (i)  that  every  in- 
dividual is  an  end  in  himself;  (2)  that  no  indi- 
vidual is  to  be  regarded  primarily  as  a  means  to 
the  fulfillment  of  the  purposes  or  desires  of  any 
other  individual ;  (3)  that  no  class  or  group  of 
individuals  is  to  be  regarded  primarily  as  a  means 
to  the  interests  of  another  class  as  end;  (4)  that 


Il8  THE  NEW   MIND 

opportunity,  and,  so  far  as  opportunity  is  de- 
pendent upon  them,  material  wealth  and  income, 
should  be  distributed  to  individuals  in  proportion 
to  capacity  and  willingness  to  use  them  for  the 
collective  good;  (5)  that  the  collective  good  will 
be  highest  when  opportunity,  which  at  best  is 
limited  in  quantity  and  quality,  is  distributed  so 
that  each  individual  is  enabled  to  develop  his 
potential  powers  and  capacities  in  like  proportion 
to  the  development  of  these  potentialities  in  every 
other  individual;  (6)  that  the  means  to  the  utili- 
zation of  individual  capacity  and  the  develop- 
ment of  individual  happiness  can  be  found  only 
in  the  willing,  fair-minded  cooperative  work  of 
individuals  and  groups,  all  of  whom  accept  and 
live  up  to  the  foregoing  principles;  and  (7)  that 
to  secure  the  operation  of  these  principles  all 
forms  and  devices  of  autocracy,  and  of  the 
master-and-servant  ethics,  whether  in  the  family, 
in  national  political  life,  in  international  relations, 
or  in  industry,  must  give  way  to  government  by 
the  people  as  a  whole. 

Is  there  anything  in  that  aim  that  ought  not  to 
be  sought  in  these  days  of  world  reconstruc- 
tion? 

2.  When  we  think  of  these  days  of  unrest 
and  the  multiplied  violations  of  freedom  even 
in  America,  can  we  doubt  a  more  elemental 
truth,  that  our  government,  state  and  national, 
is  solemnly  bound  not  only  to  cease  its  un- 


POLITICAL  AND   SOCIAL  CHALLENGE    II9 

warrantable  interference  with  freedom,  and 
the  plans  for  further  interference  through 
sedition  laws  for  peace  time,  but  also  to  give 
the  fullest  protection  to  freedom  of  discussion? 
Surely  the  Philadelphia  Yearly  Meeting  of  the 
Friends  is  basicly  and  everlastingly  right,  when 
they  say: 

There  is  one  way — and  one  way  only — in  which 
we  can  hope  to  achieve  sane  and  peaceful  prog- 
ress. It  is  the  way  of  education,  of  increasing 
understanding  of  the  causes  and  cures  of  this 
great  unrest.  And  there  is  one  condition — and 
one  condition  only — upon  which  we  can  hope  to 
follow  this  path  of  peaceable  and  orderly  ad- 
vance. It  is  the  condition  of  individual  liberty, 
liberty  to  interchange  ideas  and  information,  lib- 
erty to  speak  and  write,  liberty  to  discuss.  In 
any  other  direction  lies  stagnation  or  upheaval. 
.  .  .  No  man  can  measure  the  harm  that  may 
ensue  if  we  continue  these  incroachments  upon 
freedom  of  expression.  History  is  replete  with 
lessons  of  the  folly  of  suppression.  .  .  .  No 
easy  indifference  will  suffice  to  maintain  freedom 
among  us.  Liberty  asks  of  us  a  price,  the  price 
of  tolerance  toward  those  to  whom  we  do  not 
wish  to  show  tolerance.  But  it  is  only  the  un- 
pleasant or  hated  utterance  that  really  tests  the 
quality  of  our  liberty.  "  The  supreme  test  of 
civil  liberty,"  a  noted  English  lord  has  said,  "  is 
our  determination  to  protect  an  unpopular  minor- 
ity in  time  of  national  excitement," 


I20  THE  NEW   MIND 

Every  one  of  us  has  some  power  to  help  at  this 
vital  point. 

One  is  glad  to  hear  the  same  doctrine  un- 
equivocally declared  in  the  Senate  by  Senator 
France : 

We  hold  it  to  be  an  elemental  and  self-evident 
truth  that  there  can  be  no  free  government  with- 
out practical  and  absolute  freedom  of  speech,  an 
uninfluenced  and  unfettered  press,  and  the  un- 
abridged right  of  the  people  to  assemble  to  peti- 
tion for  a  redress  of  their  grievances.  We  de- 
mand the  immediate  restoration  of  these  rights, 
the  repeal  of  the  unconstitutional  and  tyrannical 
Espionage  act,  and  a  recommendation  of  amnesty 
for  all  political  prisoners  held  under  this  federal 
statute  only  for  political  opinions  or  for  w^ords 
spoken  or  written,  as  distinguished  from  direct 
incitement  to  violence,  acts  of  violence,  or  overt 
acts  against  the  government.  You  have  con- 
demned Bolshevism  for  its  confiscation  of  real 
and  personal  property.  But  that  is  a  worse  form 
of  Bolshevism  which  confiscates  real  and  personal 
rights.  Confiscation  of  real  and  personal  prop- 
erty affects  the  few.  The  confiscation  of  real 
and  personal  rights  impoverishes  all. 

Ill 

Preserving  and  Fulfilling  the  Values  of  the 
Nezv  Age 
But   we    are   to    ask,    also,    hozv   political, 
economic  and  social  changes  may  serve  not 


POLITICAL  AND   SOCIAL  CHALLENGE     121 

only  to  withstand  the  perils  of  the  new  age, 
but  to  preserve  and  fulfill  its  values.  Those 
values  we  conceived  to  be  the  values  involved 
in  some  of  the  outstanding  characteristics  of 
the  present  world-order;  in  the  help  of  the 
moral  demonstrations  of  the  war;  and  in  the 
greatest  ideal  achievements  of  the  war. 

1.  In  the  first  place,  there  are  great  grounds 
of  hope  in  some  of  the  outstanding  character- 
istics of  the  present  world-order :  world  sol- 
idarity; prodigiously  increased  resources  of 
power  and  wealth  and  knowledge  made  possible 
through  modern  science;  forced  scientific  co- 
operation on  an  unheard-of  scale;  the  world- 
wide trend  toward  democracy  and  the  universal 
diffusion  of  knowledge;  the  establishment  of  a 
League  of  Nations  to  Enforce  Peace,  even 
granting  its  limitations;  the  steadily  growing 
internationalism;  and  the  deepening  sense  of 
the  necessity  of  a  larger  and  more  significant 
goal  for  social  progress. 

These  characteristics  alone  make  this  a  great 
age,  surely  not  to  be  despaired  of.  And  there 
is  scarcely  one  of  them — as  our  previous  dis- 
cussion has  already  suggested  —  that  either 
cannot  be  used,  or  will  not  directly  help,  to  a 
better  social  order,  a  finer  civilization. 

Let  us  take  one  concrete  illustration — and  a 
test  case — the  hopes  from  the  heague  of  Na- 


122  THE  NEW   MIND 

tions,  in  spite  of  the  great  obstacles  it  has  en- 
countered. So  much  is  here  at  stake  that  it  is 
worth  while  to  quote  at  length  Professor  Seig- 
nobos'  able  discussion  of  this  vexed  question 
in  the  New  Burope: 

Should  so  many  obstacles  make  us  despair  of 
the  League  of  Nations,  of  general  disarmament 
and  a  permanent  peace?  Must  Europe  resign 
herself  to  reverting  to  the  costly  and  fragile  ex- 
pedients of  pre-war  days — the  armed  peace  and 
balancing  alliances?  Or  is  there  still  some  hope 
of  an  international  future  different  from  the 
past?     .     .     . 

If  the  work  of  the  Conference  has  been  im- 
perfect, it  has  not  been  in  vain,  and  its  creations, 
incomplete  as  they  may  be,  offer  a  very  hopeful 
perspective.  The  League  of  Nations  is  born  (the 
Conference  has  drawn  up  its  birth  certificate)  :  it 
is  not  still-born,  as  the  adherents  of  military  tra- 
dition would  fain  have  us  believe.  It  is  as  yet 
only  a  permanent  alliance  of  former  belligerents, 
but  it  is  so  constituted  as  to  be  capable  of  enlarge- 
ment into  a  real  League  of  All  the  Nations.  We 
may  sum  up  as  follows  the  grounds  for  hoping 
that  this  transformation  may  be  achieved: — 

( I )  The  territorial  settlement  of  Europe,  which 
is  the  most  reasonable  part  of  the  work  of  the 
Conference,  establishes  between  the  various 
States  a  new  balance,  more  favourable  to  inter- 
national peace.  It  reduces  the  number  of  the 
Great  Powers,  which  are  always  more  disposed 


POLITICAL  AND   SOCIAL  CHALLENGE    1 23 

to  disturb  the  peace,  less  resigned  to  the  limita- 
tion of  their  sovereignty  by  obligations  of  inter- 
national morality;  while  the  three  fallen  Powers 
are  just  the  three  military  monarchies,  those 
most  hostile  to  peaceful  order.  It  creates  four 
States  of  medium  strength — Poland,  Czecho- 
slovakia, Jugo-Slavia  and  Rumania — strong 
enough  to  form  a  barrier  against  the  old  aggres- 
sive empires,  but  not  strong  enough  to  pursue  an 
aggressive  policy  themselves.  This  distribution 
of  forces,  which  had  not  been  known  in  Europe 
since  the  sixteenth  century,  facilitates  the  entry 
of  the  various  States  into  the  League  of  Nations, 
whose  nucleus  is  formed  by  the  three  great  dem- 
ocratic Powers — Britain,  France  and  Italy — each 
eager  to  avoid  war. 

(2)  The  League  is  open  to  the  neutrals  of 
Europe  and  America,  who  are  already  beginning 
to  enter.  These  are  all  medium-sized  or  small 
States,  democratic  in  constitution  and  pacific  in 
policy.  They  will  bring  with  them  the  desire  to 
make  the  League  universal  and  will  introduce  a 
current  of  international  opinion  such  as  will  tone 
down  national  egoisms. 

(3)  The  League  has  received  from  the  Con- 
ference several  effective  functions — notably  the 
administration  of  mixed  territories — the  State  of 
Danzig,  the  State  of  the  Saar  (with  Fiume  and 
the  Straits  to  follow)  :  the  control  over  the  rights 
of  minorities;  the  supervision  of  extra-European 
territory  disposed  of  under  a  mandate.  These 
functions  have  brought  and  will  bring  into  being 


124  THE  NEW  MIND 

organs  that  will  serve  as  precedents  for  the  crea- 
tion of  other  international  organs. 

(4)  The  League  has  received  several  interna- 
tional pozvers — the  right  of  inviting  States  to 
revise  the  treaties,  the  right  of  urging  upon  them 
the  reduction  of  armaments,  the  right  of  holding 
them  to  the  acceptance  of  arbitration  in  cases  of 
dispute.  These  are  as  yet  merely  moral  powers 
without  "sanction";  but  they  can  exercise  an 
irresistible  pressure  on  the  various  Governments, 
when  once  they  have  the  backing  of  a  strong  in- 
ternational public  opinion. 

(5)  The  League  has  created  and  already  set  in 
motion  a  permanent  international  organ — the 
Secretariat — an  office  for  the  registration  of  all 
international  treaties,  designed  to  become  a  centre 
of  information  for  all  facts  of  international  char- 
acter and  the  instrument  of  concentration  for  all 
international  services.  The  Secretariat,  provided 
with  a  permanent  international  staff,  will  be  a 
centre  where  international  public  opinion  will 
form,  and  whence  it  will  permeate  to  the  Gov- 
ernments. 

(6)  The  League  has  created  an  international 
Labour  Comntission,  which  has  already  prepared 
international  legislation  on  conditions  of  work 
and  constituted  the  International  Labour  Bureau. 
These  organs  place  those  in  power  in  each  coun- 
try in  personal  contact  with  the  leaders  of  the 
working-class,  the  class  most  opposed  to  war, 
most  eager  for  complete  disarmament  and  lasting 
peace.     In  proportion  as   Labour  extends   its 


POLITICAL  AND   SOCIAL  CHALLENGE    1 25 

power  in  the  internal  politics  of  the  various 
States,  it  will  give  added  force  to  the  League  of 
Nations  to  assume  direction  of  world  policy. 

(7)  The  Governments,  out  of  fear  of  limiting 
their  sovereignt}^  would  not  permit  the  creation 
of  any  international  powers — neither  legislature 
nor  judicature,  nor  even  army;  they  merely 
formed  an  executive,  consisting  solely  of  repre- 
sentatives of  the  Governments.  But  those  in 
power,  instead  of  being  represented  according  to 
the  traditional  method  by  members  of  the  diplo- 
matic bureaucracy,  will  be  present  in  person  at 
the  deliberations  of  the  executive.  .  .  .  For 
the  head  of  a  parliamentary  Government  is  not 
an  official,  but  an  elected  representative  of  his 
Parliament  and  subject  to  the  public  opinion  of 
his  people.  The  League  of  Nations,  then,  is  al- 
ready provided  with  a  tolerably  representative 
executive.  The  permanent  Court  of  Justice 
which  is  at  present  being  organized,  only  has 
restricted  powers ;  but  it  will  be  sufficient  to  ex- 
tend it  in  order  to  make  of  it  the  supreme  inter- 
national court.  .  .  .  The  League  will  at  first 
only  be  a  confederation  without  any  international 
government.  But  every  durable  confederation 
ends  by  transforming  itself  into  a  federation. 

The  path  which  leads  to  the  League  of  Na- 
tions is  still  encumbered  by  obstacles  piled  up  by 
the  Governments.  But  it  has  been  clearly  marked 
out,  and  if  the  nations  once  set  forth  upon  it,  they 
will  in  time  reach  the  goal  of  their  desires.  [The 
New  Europe,  March  25,  1920,  pp.  251-253.] 


126  THE  NEW   MliND 

Such  development  of  the  present  League  of 
Nations  would  be  politics  of  a  high  order,  and 
make  directly  for  a  better  civilization. 

2.  Besides  the  values  involved  in  certain 
outstanding  characteristics  of  the  present 
world-order,  there  were  mentioned,  it  will  be 
remembered,  the  moral  demonstrations  of  the 
zvar,  and  the  greatest  ideal  achievements  of  the 
ivar.  The  moral  demonstrations  of  the  war 
were  these: — that  we  should  get  rid  of  shallow 
views  of  progress,  of  creed,  and  of  morals; 
and  that  we  should  be  certain  of  the  inescapable 
grip  of  the  laws  of  God  upon  the  life  of  na- 
tions as  well  as  of  individuals.  The  greatest 
ideal  achievements  of  the  war  were  considered 
to  be:  the  rare  idealism  with  which  America 
came  into  the  war ;  men's  deepening  conviction 
of  the  supremacy  of  the  intangible  values;  co- 
operation in  a  great  cause  on  an  unheard-of 
scale ;  the  largest  measure  of  the  spirit  of  sacri- 
fice the  world  had  ever  seen ;  and  the  resulting 
new  revelation  of  common  men. 

Now  both  these  moral  demonstrations  of  the 
war  and  these  greatest  ideal  achievements  of 
the  war, — if  they  continue  at  all  to  be  vital 
realities — cannot  help  affecting  in  the  long  run 
political,  economic  and  social  conditions.  But 
both,  as  their  names  indicate,  bear  so  directly 
upon  the  educational  and  moral  and  religious 


POLITICAL  AND   SOCIAL  CHALLENGE     1 27 

challenge  of  this  new  age,  that  here,  too,  I 
must  content  myself  with  a  single  but  inclusive 
illustration,  bearing  upon  political  and  social 
changes. 

The  new  revelation,  in  the  war,  of  common 
men  should  mean  a  new  birth  for  democracy, — 
a  truer,  more  consistent  and  more  thorough- 
going democracy  than  the  world  has  ever  yet 
seen,  in  line  with  something  like  the  British 
Labour  Program,  or  Professor  Wolfe's  parallel 
statement.  The  common  men  have  earned  this 
right.  That  would  be  the  only  ultimate  justi- 
fication of  the  war.  It  must  be  a  democracy 
rooted  at  every  point  in  the  spiritual  principle 
of  reverence  for  personality,  the  sense  of  the 
priceless  value  and  the  inviolable  sacredness  of 
every  person.  Every  relation  in  the  democ- 
racy— personal,  industrial,  class,  national, 
racial — must  be  tested  by  that  principle.  There 
must  be  no  use  of  persons  as  things,  as  mere 
means,  as  comfortable  but  despised  conveni- 
ences. It  must  be  a  democracy  as  radical  as 
the  essential  and  radical  democracy  of  Christ, 
that  shall  not  be  able  to  doubt  that  property  and 
institutions  are  made  for  men,  not  men  for 
property  and  institutions.  It  must  be  a  democ- 
racy eager  to  measure  up  to  the  included  prin- 
ciples of  obligation  according  to  power,  and  of 
"  first  in  service." 


128  THE  NEW   MIND 

For  such  a  democracy  we  must  all  get  ready 
here  in  America.  Ultimately  it  will  come,  with 
or  without  our  consent.  But  it  ought  to  come 
by  the  clear  and  glad  choice  of  the  whole  peo- 
ple. But  the  discouraging  thing  in  the  political 
field  to-day  is  that  there  is  no  evidence  that 
either  of  our  old  parties  is  grappling  earnestly 
with  these  problems  of  a  radical  democracy, 
or  is  anything  but  selfishly  reactionary.  One 
of  the  ablest  of  our  American  editors  has  said 
that  the  most  conservative  parties  in  the  world 
are  our  two  chief  American  parties.  And  it 
is  no  credit  to  America  that  that  is  true.  A 
Republican  Senator  brings  a  like  charge: 

Judged  by  their  legislative  records  in  Congress 
during  the  last  three  years,  both  of  these  two 
great  parties  are  as  decadent  as  the  issues  which 
first  quickened  them  into  being. 

One  of  two  things  is  likely  to  be  true:  either  we 
shall  have  an  essentially  new  party,  dealing 
earnestly  and  honestly  with  the  issues  of  a 
radical  democracy  by  political  means,  or  we 
shall  have  such  a  democracy  forced  upon  us 
along  industrial  lines. 

In  any  case,  that  new  birth  for  democracy 
will  require  the  patient  working  through  of  the 
baffling  problems  of  a  truly  democratic  policy, 
in  the  interests  of  the  whole  people,  as  to  the 
discovery  and  use  of  natural  forces;  as  to  the 


POLITICAL  AND   SOCIAL  CHALLENGE    1 29 

control  and  utilization  of  natural  resources;  as 
to  the  management  and  ownership  of  public 
utilities:  as  to  cooperation  and  democracy  in 
industries;  and  as  to  those  manifold  social  mal- 
adjustments that  still  blot  our  record  as  a  na- 
tion. 

One  does  not  wish  to  leave  this  economic 
issue  vague.  There  is  a  direct  challenge  to 
Christian  laymen  in  it,  as  Professor  Small  has 
said: 

Since  the  armistice,  the  main  problem  of  the 
Western  nations  has  shifted.  The  central  human 
question  now,  and  probably  for  generations  to 
come,  is,  What  is  right,  and  how  may  we  realize 
the  right  in  economic  relations?  Even  in  the 
countries  which  are  least  pacified  and  between  the 
countries  that  are  trying  to  organize  stable  peace, 
this  demand  for  economic  justice  is  the  pivot  of 
all  the  rest.  Since  this  fundamental  question  of 
economic  justice  has  taken  possession  of  the  big 
world,  the  direction  of  religious  dynamics  must 
and  should  change  accordingly.  .  .  .  Both  in 
general  and  in  the  concrete  the  Christian  demand 
is  for  a  Christianity  able  to  vitalize  economic 
righteousness.  ...  As  I  have  said,  of  late 
there  has  been  no  lack  of  Christian  declaration 
that  Christianity,  whether  churched  or  un- 
churched, must  make  the  cause  of  economic  jus- 
tice its  own.  Yet  evidence  is  still  lacking  that  the 
leading  laymen  in  the  American  churches  are 
willing  to  throw  their  influence  in  favour  of  recog- 


I30  THE   NEW    MIND 

nizing  the  problem  of  economic  justice  as  the 
chief  spiritual  issue  of  our  period.  It  remains 
to  be  seen  whether  the  balance  of  power  will 
apply  the  full  force  of  organized  Christianity 
to  investigation  and  settlement  of  that  problem. 
[The  Christian  Century,  April  29,  1920.] 

In  the  working  out  of  all  these  difficult  prob- 
lems here  in  America,  there  is  both  need  and 
opportunity  to  make  nezv  and  fruitful  applica- 
tions of  our  guiding  principle  of  reverence  for 
personality.  For  it  suggests  a  vital  test  in  the 
choice  of  methods  In  the  various  forms  of  co- 
operation and  state  action:  namely,  the  careful 
preser\^ation  of  individual  initiative.  For 
nothing  is  more  important,  both  for  the  indi- 
vidual himself  and  for  society,  than  that  the 
individual  should  be  encouraged  to  the  fullest 
exercise  of  his  own  initiative,  and  so  to  the 
largest  contribution  to  the  community  life. 
By  being  most  true  to  his  own  Individuality  he 
will  be  most  true  to  all.  It  is,  thus,  of  prime 
importance  for  the  progress  of  the  race  in  this 
after-the-war  age  that  a  sharp  discrimination 
should  be  made  between  those  forms  of  co- 
operation and  state-action  that  tend  to  check 
and  repress  individual  initiative,  and  those 
other  forms  of  cooperation  and  state-action 
that  definitely  encourage  such  Initiative  and 
seek  the  best  and  largest  contribution   from 


POLITICAL  AND   SOCIAL  CHALLENGE    I3I 

each  citizen  and  class  and  state  and  nation. 
Socialism  seems  often  to  fail  here  to  exercise 
a  much  needed  discrimination.  It  is  one  thing 
to  resist  innovations,  adopted  for  the  period  of 
the  war,  which  threaten  personal  liberty  after 
the  war.  It  is  quite  another,  in  a  merely 
standpat  attitude,  to  resist  innovations  which 
consist  in  a  remodeling  of  our  national  and  in- 
ternational organization,  "  so  that  it  operates 
more  efficiently  and  more  humanely."  One  of 
the  great  issues  of  the  time,  therefore,  is  the 
decision  that  the  enormous  powers  of  forced 
cooperation  and  organization  characteristic  of 
our  time  are  to  be  guided  by  a  deep  sense  of 
the  need  of  individual  free  initiative,  and  to  be 
used  for  the  constructive  enterprises  of  the 
kingdom  of  God,  for  the  true  progress  of  the 
race. 

This  is  in  full  harmony  with  the  fundamental 
thought  of  Bertrand  Russell's  Principles  of 
Social  Reconstruction  in  judging  what  is  the 
right  direction  of  movement  in  any  given  time: 

There  are  two  general  principles  which  are  al- 
ways applicable. 

1.  The  growth  and  vitality  of  individuals  and 
communities  is  to  be  promoted  as  far  as  possible. 

2.  The  growth  of  one  individual  or  one  com- 
munity is  to  be  as  little  as  possible  at  the  expense 
of  another. 


132  THE  NEW  MIND 

A  great  moral  and  religious  conception  un- 
derlies these  principles,  as  he  elsewhere  says : 

The  first  and  greatest  change  that  is  required 
is  to  establish  a  morality  of  initiative,  not  a  mo- 
rality of  submission,  a  morality  of  hope  rather 
than  fear,  of  things  to  be  done  rather  than  of 
things  to  be  left  undone.  ...  It  will  be  in- 
spired by  a  vision  of  what  human  life  may  be, 
and  will  be  happy  with  the  joy  of  creation,  living 
in  a  large  free  world  of  initiative  and  hope.  It 
will  love  mankind,  not  for  what  they  are  to  the 
outward  eye,  but  for  what  imagination  shows 
that  they  have  it  in  them  to  become. 

This  is  in  the  very  spirit  of  Christ's  faith  in 
men  and  reverence  for  them.  There  is  need 
here  for  earnest  study,  and  loyal  cooperation 
and  determination  on  the  part  of  Christian  men 
and  women. 

And  beyond  all  the  borders  of  America  itself 
an  enlarged  and  deepened  democratic  ideal  will 
require  world-vision,  world-thinking,  world- 
responsibility.  That  America  should  refuse 
finally  to  take  her  full  share  of  responsibility, 
in  mandatories  or  otherwise,  in  the  cooperative 
endeavour  of  a  vigorous  growing  League  of 
Free  Nations  would  be  not  only  irremediably 
to  sully  the  rare  idealism  of  her  war  record,  but 
also  eternally  to  shame  her  people.  The  time 
of  her  isolation  is  gone.  Those  are  blind  who 
deny  it.  It  is  impossible  that  we  should  stay 
in  our  present  state  of  shame  and  humiliation. 


LECTURE  V 

THE  NEW  MIND :  THE  EDU- 
CATIONAL CHALLENGE 


LECTURE  V 

THE  NEW  MIND:  THE  EDUCATIONAL 
CHALLENGE 

IN  our  attempt  to  define  the  new  mind 
needed  for  the  new  age,  we  turn  now 
from  the  field  of  the  poHtical,  economic 
and  social  changes  required  to  the  demands 
made  upon  education.  What  can  education 
do  to  overcome  the  perils  of  the  new  age? 
What  can  education  do  to  insure  that  the  great 
values  of  this  critical  time  shall  be  carried  fully- 
over  into  that  new  civilization  which  we  seek? 
At  every  stage  in  the  facing  of  the  perils  of 
our  time — evil  inheritances  from  the  war,  dis- 
illusionment, reaction,  revolution — better  edu- 
cation is  manifestly  required.  How  else  shall 
we  share  in  that  new  fight  for  freedom  and  for 
a  more  thoroughgoing  democracy,  in  those 
enormous  constructive  efforts  demanded,  in 
the  impending  economic  changes?  At  every 
stage  in  the  needed  incarnation  of  the  great 
values  of  our  time,  too,  there  is  the  same  neces- 
sity for  an  education  that  shall  match  the  great 
135 


136  THE  NEW   MIND 

tasks  and  opportunities  revealed.  The  need 
and  opportunity,  then,  are  prodigious.  Can 
the  educational  forces  measure  up  to  that  need 
and  to  that  opportunity  ? 

In  these  last  two  chapters,  dealing  with  the 
educational  and  with  the  moral  and  religious 
challenge  of  our  times,  while  all  that  will  be 
said  will  be  presented  in  the  full  light  of  our 
consideration  of  the  perils  and  values  of  the 
new  age,  there  will  probably  be  a  certain  gain 
in  simplicity,  directness  and  interest,  in  not  at- 
tempting detailed  comparisons  between  the 
different  parts  of  our  discussion. 

What,  then,  are  some  of  the  demonstrations 
of  the  war  and  of  after-the-war  conditions  that 
particularly  concern  educators?  And  what 
are  some  of  the  consequent  demands  made 
upon  education  to-day? 

I 

The  Pozuer  of  Bducation 
First  of  all,  the  world  has  probably  never 
seen  such  a  demonstration  of  the  power  of 
education,  as  in  Germany's  preparation  for  her 
war  for  world  domination.  Here  was  a  people 
virtually  made  over  in  fifty  years,  its  standards 
and  ideals  reversed.  The  immoral  philosophy 
of  the  State  as  above  all  moral  obligations  and 
the  materialistic  interpretation  of  the  survival 


THE  EDUCATIONAL  CHALLENGE       I37 

of  the  fittest  had  been  drilled  into  the  whole 
nation  from  kindergarten  to  university,  until 
it  permeated  all  their  life,  and  they  responded 
as  a  unit  with  the  same  formula,  the  same 
gesture,  the  same  emotion.  This  proof  of  the 
stupendous  power  of  education  was  most  im- 
pressive, and  is  a  distinct  challenge  to  Amer- 
ican educators  to  note  what  tremendous  changes 
can  be  wrought  by  education  even  within 
limited  periods. 

At  the  same  time  It  is  solemn  warning;  not 
only  because  it  shows  how  completely  educa- 
tion may  be  prostituted  to  evil  ends,  but  also 
because  it  reveals  so  clearly  a  false  conception 
of  the  aim  of  education.  The  uniformity  of 
result  itself  betrays  the  presence  and  working 
of  a  kind  of  monstrous  machine.  Education 
cannot  be  safely  made  into  mere  propaganda, 
whether  for  good  or  evil  ends.  To  regard  the 
pupil  simply  as  means  to  some  ulterior  end 
is  itself  desecration.  His  own  liberty,  his  own 
initiative,  his  own  personality,  his  own  truth  to 
his  unique  individuality  are  to  be  sacredly  re- 
spected. A  uniform  result,  therefore.  In  edu- 
cation is  itself  an  evil.     As  Russell  puts  it: 

If  the  children  themselves  were  considered,  ed- 
ucation would  not  aim  at  making  them  belong  to 
this  party  or  that,  but  at  enabling  them  to  choose 
intelligently  between  the  parties;  it  would  aim 


138  THE   NEW   MIND 

at  making  them  able  to  think,  not  at  making  them 
think  what  their  teachers  think.  Education  as  a 
poHtical  weapon  could  not  exist  if  we  respected 
the  rights  of  children. 

Germany  therefore  has  two  lessons  upon 
education  to  teach  the  nations:  the  power  of 
education  and  the  constant  danger  of  the  prosti- 
tution of  education  by  using  it  as  propaganda. 

II 

The  Value  of  Education 

The  crisis  of  the  war  and  its  consequences 
throw  also  into  relief  the  indispensable  value 
of  education,  not  simply  for  the  advantage  of 
the  individual  in  competitive  struggle,  but  for 
the  whole  good  of  the  race. 

In  the  first  place,  the  war  brought  out  the 
selfish  adTantage  of  education  for  the  indi- 
vidual himself.  College  education  proved  up 
as  an  aid  to  promotion.  The  extensive  educa- 
tional plans  of  the  Government  in  the  demobili- 
zation period  brought  home  to  many  thousands 
of  men  the  need  and  gain  of  further  study. 
And  there  is  no  doubt  that  higher  education 
gained  distinctly  in  prestige  during  the  war. 
College  attendance  is  increasing,  and  the  care- 
ful statistics  of  President  Hughes  make  it  seem 
most  likely  that  it  will  increase  even  beyond  the 


THE  EDUCATIONAL  CHALLENGE   1 39 

capacity  of  established  institutions  to  meet  it. 
A  larger  opportunity  than  the  colleges  have 
ever  had  is  now  before  them.  They  need  to 
make  ready  for  it  by  careful  forecast  and 
planning.  It  is  the  business  of  American  edu- 
cation to  make  the  most  of  this  generally  deep- 
ened conviction  of  the  value  of  education. 

But  even  this  more  selfish  side  of  the  value 
of  education — which  too  often  engrosses  our 
attention — is  not  simply  selfish.  Education 
proves  to  be  for  the  advantage  of  the  indi- 
vidual commonly  because  in  some  way  it  en- 
ables him  to  render  a  larger  service  to  the 
community. 

But — quite  beyond  that — there  are  many 
things  in  these  after-the-war  days  that  give  a 
great  new  emphasis  to  the  indispensable  value 
of  education  for  the  whole  good  of  the  race. 

First  of  all,  in  these  days  of  unexampled  co- 
operation, we  cannot  forget  that  human  co- 
operation, even  in  its  simplest  forms,  requires 
some  degree  of  education,  and  the  education 
must  increase  as  the  cooperative  task  grows  in 
size  and  complexity. 

It  is  not  by  accident  either  that  the  world- 
wide trend  toward  democracy  is  so  uniformly 
accompanied  with  the  diffusion  of  education. 
For  democracy  as  self-government  requires  for 
its  very  existence  some  education.     Even  the 


I40  THE   NEW   MIND 

simpler  problems  of  democracy  require  judg- 
ment as  to  ends  to  be  set,  and  as  to  means 
adapted  to  those  ends.  And  once  again,  as  the 
democracy  develops,  education  must  develop 
with  it. 

We  have  seen  also,  in  our  analysis  of  this 
new  age  in  which  we  are,  how  inevitably  and 
at  multiplied  points  great  constructive  zvorld 
tasks  confront  us,  appalling  in  their  extent  and 
complexity.  Good  intentions  will  not  solve 
them.  They  require  the  farthest  reach  of 
scientific  mastery,  and  the  disciplined  educa- 
tion that  makes  that  possible. 

On  the  other  hand,  knowledge  alone  will  not 
solve  any  of  our  greatest  problems.  When,  for 
example,  we  think  of  those  larger  and  more 
significant  goals  of  social  activity,  which  men 
are  more  and  more  cherishing  as  alone  ade- 
quate, the  indispensable  value  of  education  for 
the  production  of  thoughtful,  unselfish,  signifi- 
cant personalities  is  plain. 

Take,  for  example,  that  pregnant  paragraph 
of  Professor  Ward's  on  the  trend  of  progress, 
based  on  a  wide  comparative  study  of  social 
programs,  already  quoted  in  part,  and  feel 
again  the  imperative  demands  of  such  goals  for 
the  completest  education  on  the  ideal  side: 

It  is  increasingly  apparent  that  the  new  order 


THE  EDUCATIONAL  CHALLENGE      14I 

both  in  plan  and  in  experiment  is  forming  around 
certain  definite  principles.  Men  everywhere  are 
seeking  for  a  larger  measure  of  equality  and  for 
the  realization  of  fraternity  in  universal  sei"vice 
to  each  other.  They  are  more  and  more  deter- 
mined to  make  the  social  machinery  an  efficient 
means  to  the  highest  ends  of  human  living.  It 
is  becoming  manifest  that  the  development  of  per- 
sonality is  to  supersede  the  acquisition  of  goods 
as  the  goal  of  social  activity  and  that  the  fullest 
development  of  personality  is  to  be  found  in  the 
effort  to  realize  the  solidarity  of  the  human 
family. 

Surely  this  critical  time  can  leave  us  in  no 
doubt  as  to  the  indispensable  value  of  educa- 
tion, and  the  vastly  increased  significance  of  its 
tasks  to-day. 

Ill 

The  Comparative  Failure  of  Our  Education 
on  the  Ideal  Side 
The  war  was  a  time  of  testing  for  our  whole 
civilization.  It  tested  the  adequacy  of  our  edu- 
cation. Scientific  technical  education  seems  to 
have  borne  the  test  very  well.  College  educa- 
tion, as  a  training  for  efficient  adaptation  to 
varied  situations,  seems  also,  as  we  have  seen, 
to  have  fairly  proved  out.  The  number  of 
soldiers,  on  the  other  hand,  who  could  not  read 


142  THE  NEW   MIND     ' 

or  write  English  and  had  but  the  most  meager 
training  made  it  clear  that  education  had  not 
yet  conquered  the  problem  of  illiteracy.  But 
I  fear  that  the  most  serious  defect  in  our  edu- 
cation, which  the  war  brought  out,  was  the 
comparative  failure  of  our  education  on  the 
ideal  side.  The  very  able  British  Committee 
on  the  Army  and  Religion,  in  their  careful 
study  of  religious  conditions  in  the  British 
Army,  assert  that  nothing  was  more  clear  in 
all  their  findings  than  the  appalling  ignorance 
on  the  part  of  the  masses  of  the  British  sol- 
diers of  the  essentials  of  religion  and  of  Chris- 
tianity. Vague  superstitions  and  negations 
made  up  far  too  large  a  part  of  their  religious 
ideas.  There  is  evidence  which  makes  one 
think  that  much  the  same  thing  would  have  to 
be  said  concerning  great  numbers  of  our  Amer- 
ican soldiers.  [Cf.  Religion  Among  American 
Men,  The  Committee  on  the  War  and  the  Re- 
ligious Outlook,  pp.  14  ff.]  Indeed  one  is 
often  struck  with  the  profound  ignorance  of 
essential  Christianity  on  the  part  of  many 
highly  trained  men  even  at  home.  The  ease 
with  which  many  members  of  flourishing 
Christian  churches,  too,  are  swept  into  shallow 
religious  fads  and  into  what  at  best  are  ex- 
travagant one-sided  emphases  is  evidence  of  a 
similar  lack  of  any  thorough  religious  ground- 


THE  EDUCATIONAL  CHALLENGE   1 43 

ing.  Fortunately  the  Christian  spirit  is  often 
more  pervasive  than  Christian  ideas. 

But  this  dire  failure  in  religious  education — 
for  that  I  fear  it  must  be  called — suggests  a 
similar  comparative  failure  on  the  entire  ideal 
side  of  our  education.  For  the  interests  of  re- 
ligion were  more  specifically  brought  out 
through  the  churches,  than  the  finer  aspects  of 
education  were,  either  directly  through  the 
schools,  or  through  other  agencies.  Both  the 
experience  with  soldiers  in  classes  in  the  mean- 
ing of  the  war  and  the  outcomes  that  ought  to 
follow,  and  the  wide-spread  reaction  from  the 
war  since — in  an  epidemic  of  restlessness,  lack 
of  initiative,  lack  of  sense  of  responsibility,  and 
selfish  pleasure-seeking — indicate  pretty  clearly 
that  for  great  multitudes  the  more  ideal  in- 
terests in  education  had  not  been  deeply 
grounded  or  largely  taken  on.  Clear  insight, 
for  example,  into  the  aims  of  the  war,  into  the 
meaning  of  democracy,  into  the  great  ethical 
principles  of  the  social  consciousness, — to  say 
nothing  of  aesthetic  appreciation — was  too  gen- 
erally lacking. 

Now  this  comparative  failure — under  the 
great  test  of  war — of  our  education  on  its  ideal 
side  is  of  vital  concern ;  for  it  touches  the  whole 
deeper  life  of  the  people,  and  their  fitness  for  a 
great  forward  step.     It  not  only  calls  for  great 


144  "THE  NEW   MIND 

new  emphases  in  education  but  challenges  our 
whole  educational  process,  and  compels  us  to 
ask  whether  something  is  not  fundamentally  at 
fault  in  our  present  educational  aims,  spirit 
and  method.  And  these  all  we  need  to  ex- 
amine in  the  light  of  the  present  world-situa- 
tion, though  all  three  are  closely  interrelated. 

IV 

The  End  of  Bdiication 

In  the  first  place,  what  should  be  the  end  of 
education?  What  light  have  these  critical 
times  to  throw  upon  it?  There  is  need  of 
some  careful,  discriminating  thinking  here,  for 
we  are  all  too  prone  to  regard  education  as 
some  kind  of  propaganda,  as  an  opportunity 
to  train  the  race  into  our  ideas  and  ideals. 

To  begin  with,  it  is  too  late  to  forget  that 
education  must  have  both  an  individual  and  a 
social  goal,  in  harmony  with  one  another,  and 
with  the  laws  of  human  development,  personal 
and  social. 

1.  We  may  appeal  confidently  to  the  guid- 
ing principle  in  our  whole  discussion — the 
supreme  ethical  and  religious  principle  of  rever- 
ence for  personality,  the  deep-going  sense  of 
the  priceless  value  and  inviolable  sacredness 
of  every  person — to  give  us  our  ruling  educa- 


THE  EDUCATIONAL   CHALLENGE      I45 

tional  ideal,  and  to  help  us  to  solve  the  really 
difficult  paradox  of  a  true  education.  For  the 
principle  of  reverence  for  personality  involves 
inevitably  both  respect  for  one's  own  person- 
ality, and  respect  for  the  liberty  and  personality 
of  others.  It  is  at  the  base,  therefore,  as  self- 
respect,  of  a  true  individualism,  and,  as  respect 
for  others,  of  a  true  socialism.  It  combines 
thus  both  "  mental  and  spiritual  fellowship 
among  men,"  and  "  mental  and  spiritual  inde- 
pendence on  the  part  of  the  individual " — to 
use  Herrmann's  most  suggestive  paradoxical 
summary  of  the  moral  law. 

Our  principle  suggests,  thus,  both  the  indi- 
vidual and  the  social  goal  in  education ;  for  the 
individual  goal,  the  full  development  of  a  free, 
independent  but  reverent  personality;  and  for 
the  social  goal,  a  developed  society  of  such 
personalities.  And  each  goal  is  necessary 
to  the  other,  and  cannot  be  dissociated  from 
it. 

2.  Oji  the  individual  side,  education  looks 
to  the  full  development  of  a  certain  kind  of 
person  whom  we  have  described  as  free  and  in- 
dependent but  reverent.  He  might  be  char- 
acterized perhaps  by  the  single  word  reverent, 
or  by  the  single  word  tlwnghtfid,  taking  that 
word  in  its  full  sweep.  For  the  thoughtful 
man  is  a  thinking  man,  discerning  the  laws  of 


146  THE  NEW   MIND 

life,  seeing  things  in  proportion,  a  considerate 
man,  and  a  man  of  inner  integrity,  intellectual 
and  spiritual. 

This  whole  principle  of  reverence  is  so 
fundamentally  spiritual  that  there  is  gain  in 
bringing  forward  at  this  point  the  precise  moral 
and  religious  characteristics  of  that  nezv  mind 
for  which  the  crisis  of  this  new  age  calls. 
Jesus  defined  that  new  mind  with  singular 
fidelity  in  the  Beatitudes.  The  men,  He  said, 
who  were  to  be  salt  and  light  for  the  new  age, 
were  those  characterized  by  these  qualities:  the 
humility  of  the  open  mind,  penitence,  self-con- 
trol at  its  highest,  the  earnest  pursuit  of  char- 
acter, sympathy  with  men,  reverence  toward 
men,  promoting  peace  among  men,  sacrificing 
for  men.  These  Cjualities  are  none  of  them 
dominating  or  enslaving.  They  are  all  rever- 
ent. They  are  all  indispensable  to  a  fine 
society.  They  are  the  basic  personal  and  social 
qualities  upon  which  every  new  age  must  build. 
They  constitute  a  true  ideal  for  moral  and  re- 
ligious education  to  attain. 

3.  On  the  social  side,  education  looks  to 
that  society  of  developed  free,  independent, 
reverent  personalities  which  is  the  goal  of  all 
human  progress.  Here  a  true  education  may 
be  said  to  be  furnishing  the  conditions  for 
fruitful   and   thoroughgoing   cooperation.     It 


THE  EDUCATIONAL  CHALLENGE       I47 

may  be  said,  also,  to  be  answering  the  un- 
conscious questions  of  growing  youth  to  the 
race:  What  are  you  trying  to  do?  How  far 
have  you  got?  Where  can  I  help?  In  other 
words,  education  may  be  here  conceived  as 
bringing  the  individual,  as  I  have  elsewhere 
said,  to  a  personal  sharing  in  the  great  intel- 
lectual and  spiritual  achievements  of  the  race: 
the  scientific  spirit  and  method,  the  historical 
spirit,  the  philosophic  mind,  aesthetic  apprecia- 
tion, the  social  consciousness  with  its  great 
ethical  implications,  and  religious  discernment 
and  commitment. 

Here  again,  as  in  the  Beatitudes,  to  which 
these  racial  spiritual  achievements  are  strangely 
akin,  the  emphasis  is  all  on  the  qualitative 
spirit,  upon  a  kind  of  person,  not  upon  the 
dogmatic  content  of  certain  views.  These 
qualities  do  not  call  anywhere  for  the  dominat- 
ing, enslaving  attitude  in  education.  On  the 
contrary,  they  will  be  best  taught  where  they 
are  best  embodied,  where  the  reverent  spirit  is 
most  manifest, 

4.  But,  it  will  be  said:  Are  we  not  bound  to 
teach  the  truth  to  our  pupils?  Undoubtedly. 
There  are  great  essential  and  inspiring  truths 
about  the  world  and  men  and  God  involved  in 
this  whole  theory  and  process  of  education. 
Our  guiding  principle   itself   implies   a  great 


148  THE  NEW  MIND 

truth  concerning  human  nature.  And  we 
should  try  to  help  our  pupils  to  the  truth  in  all 
realms.  But  this  does  not  justify  the  dominat- 
ing, over-riding,  dogmatic  attitude  in  teaching. 
The  parallel  between  the  pursuit  of  truth  and 
the  pursuit  of  duty  is  at  this  point  very  close. 
The  true  father  must  say,  as  Patterson  DuBois 
puts  it :  not,  "  I  will  conquer  that  child  what- 
ever it  may  cost  him  " ;  but,  "  I  will  help  that 
child  to  conquer  himself,  whatever  it  may  cost 
me."  So  in  trying  to  bring  another  into  the 
truth,  one  must  remember — what  Christ  so 
constantly  had  in  mind — that  neither  truth  nor 
goodness  can  be  laid  on  another  from  without. 
Truth  must  be  earned.  The  dogmatic  method, 
therefore,  from  the  start,  is  in  danger  of  sub- 
stituting a  false  process  for  a  true  one,  even 
when  one  is  most  certain  concerning  the  full 
truth  of  his  own  view.  That,  I  fear.  Is  what 
we  have  too  often  done  in  education. 

But  more  than  this  is  to  be  remembered  In 
this  pursuit  of  the  truth.  Both  the  scientific 
spirit  and  the  first  Beatitude  make  the  humble 
open  mind  the  first  condition  of  coming  into 
the  truth.  Now  that  humble  open  mind  must 
be  retained  by  the  teacher  as  well  as  by  the 
pupil,  for  truth's  own  sake.  The  teacher 
comes  to  the  child  with  humility  and  faith,  try- 
ing reverently  to  make  possible  that  new  ray 


THE  EDUCATIONAL  CHALLENGE   1 49 

of  light  on  the  truth  which  absolute  fidelity  to 
the  individuality  of  this  soul  may  bring.  Even 
for  the  sake  of  those  truths  and  views  about 
which  the  dogmatist  is  most  concerned,  there- 
fore, if  he  looks  for  growth  at  all,  he  must  keep 
the  completely  reverent  spirit. 

In  this  question  of  the  pursuit  of  truth,  there 
is  still  another  aspect  to  be  borne  in  mind. 
Truth,  it  was  long  ago  said,  needs  only  an  open 
field.  Truth  comes  to  be,  that  is,  not  by  men 
keeping  silent  about  it,  but  by  every  man  bear- 
ing honest  testimony  to  that  measure  of  truth 
it  has  been  given  him  to  see,  though  with  clear 
and  tolerant  consciousness  that  others  have 
much  to  teach  him.  There  is  in  this  attitude 
a  true  combination  of  self-respect  and  respect 
for  others.  On  the  other  hand,  it  is  also  true 
that  in  the  relation  of  teacher  and  pupil,  as  in 
the  relation  of  parent  and  child,  there  must  be 
great  care  that  the  older  and  maturer  person- 
ality should  not  over-ride  the  younger  and  less 
mature  personality.  Still,  if  that  condition  is 
fulfilled,  the  teacher  may  not  only  rightfully 
enough  at  the  right  time — which  will  be  after 
the  pupil  has  had  his  own  unhurried  oppor- 
tunity to  reach  a  conclusion  of  his  own — bear 
his  testimony  to  the  truth  in  the  matter  under 
discussion;  but  also  may  be  said  to  owe  that 
testimony  to  the  pupil,  as  one  element  in  the 


150  THE  NEW  MIND 

complete  data  on  which  the  pupil  must  finally 
act. 

A  chief  reason,  we  may  be  sure,  for  the  com- 
parative failure  of  our  education  on  the  ideal 
side,  is  to  be  found  in  our  failure  to  see  the 
true  end  in  education;  in  our  failure  in  the 
reverent  spirit,  and  so  in  our  willingness  to 
substitute  a  short,  false  dogmatic  method  for  a 
true  and  reverent  one.  There  is  no  cheap  and 
easy  and  lazy  way  to  achieve  education  on  the 
ideal  side.  It  has  spiritual  conditions.  It  is 
comparatively  easy  to  get  from  a  pupil  external 
and  conventional  conformity.  To  get  a  gen- 
uine inner  life  of  his  own  is  another  matter. 

V 

The  Spirit  of  Education 
So  closely  interwoven  are  the  end,  the  spirit, 
and  the  method  of  education,  that,  in  the  dis- 
cussion of  the  ends  of  education,  I  have  neces- 
sarily anticipated  much  that  also  indicates  the 
spirit  and  the  method  of  education. 

As  to  the  spirit  of  education,  it  has  been  al- 
ready clearly  implied  that  the  whole  conception 
and  process  of  education  must  be  permeated 
through  and  through  with  the  spirit  of  rever- 
ence for  personality, — one's  own,  and  that  of 
others.  And  respect  for  others  includes  dis- 
tinct respect  both  for  the  liberty  of  others  and 


THE   EDUCATIONAL  CHALLENGE       151 

for  the  sanctity  of  their  personality.  The  true 
teacher,  therefore,  will  abhor  the  spirit  of  the 
boss  at  any  point,  will  leave  large  scope  for 
free  action,  and  will  know  that  the  one  holy  ex- 
istence in  the  world  is  a  person.  And  with  the 
Christ,  he  will  stand  outside  the  door  of  the 
heart,  to  knock.  He  will  not  force  the  door. 
It  is  refreshing  to  find  so  beautiful  an  expres- 
sion of  this  indispensable  spirit  of  reverence, 
which  is  so  seldom  rightly  valued,  as  Bertrand 
Russell  gives: 

The  man  who  has  reverence  will  not  think  it 
his  duty  to  "  mould  "  the  young.  He  feels  in  all 
that  lives,  but  especially  in  human  beings,  and 
most  of  all  in  children,  something  sacred,  indefi- 
nable; unlimited,  something  individual  and 
strangely  precious,  the  growing  principle  of  life, 
an  embodied  fragment  of  the  dumb  striving  of 
the  world.  In  the  presence  of  a  child  he  feels 
an  unaccountable  humility — a  humility  not  easily 
defensible  on  any  rational  ground,  and  yet  some- 
how nearer  to  wisdom  than  the  easy  self-con- 
fidence of  many  parents  and  teachers.  The  out- 
ward helplessness  of  the  child  and  the  appeal  of 
dependence  make  him  conscious  of  the  responsi- 
bility of  a  trust.  His  imagination  shows  him 
what  the  child  may  become,  for  good  or  evil,  how 
its  impulses  may  be  developed  or  thwarted,  how 
its  hopes  must  be  dimmed  and  the  life  in  it  grow 
less  living,  how  its  trust  will  be  bruised  and  its 


152  THE  NEW  MIND 

quick  desires  replaced  by  brooding  will.  All  this 
gives  him  a  longing  to  help  the  child  in  its  own 
battle;  he  would  equip  and  strengthen  it,  not  for 
some  outside  end  proposed  by  the  State  or  by  any 
other  impersonal  authority,  but  for  the  ends 
which  the  child's  own  spirit  is  obscurely  seeking. 
The  man  who  feels  this  can  wield  the  authority 
of  an  educator  without  infringing  the  principle 
of  liberty. 

And  a  spirit  like  that  is  peculiarly  needed 
just  now  in  all  our  education.  The  seeming 
fractiousness  of  the  younger  generation  may 
unconsciously  reflect  this  need.  For  as  our 
claim  on  life  becomes  more  and  more  not  sim- 
ply a  demand  for  possessions  but  for  creative 
worth-while  activities  and  reverent  and  re- 
warding personal  relations ;  and  as  our  concep- 
tion of  the  goal  of  human  progress,  thus,  has 
taken  on  largeness  and  significance,  and  has 
tended  in  these  critical  years  to  shape  itself,  as 
w^e  have  seen,  in  terms  of  a  developed  society 
of  reverent  personalities; — so  the  education 
which  is  to  understand  and  guide  these  new 
aspirations  of  the  race  must  be  instinct  with 

the  supreme  principle  of  reverence  for  the 
person. 

VI 
The  Method  of  B  due  at  ion 
1.     What  shall  be  the  method  of  the  educa- 


THE  EDUCATIONAL  CHALLENGE   1 53 

tion  which  is  to  guide  these  large  new  aims  of 
men?  Perhaps  it  cannot  be  stated  more  suc- 
cinctly or  more  accurately  than  in  that  para- 
doxical summary  of  Herrmann's  of  the  moral 
law — "  mental  and  spiritual  fellowship  among 
men ;  mental  and  spiritual  independence  on  the 
part  of  the  individual."  This  is  precisely  the 
way  in  which  all  that  is  best  in  human  life  goes 
forward.  It  is  the  one  great  method  of  all 
growing  values. 

It  is  indeed  Christ's  own  fundamental 
method:  the  contagion  of  the  good  life,  on  the 
one  hand ;  the  insistence  on  the  essential  sound- 
ness of  the  individual  life,  on  the  other.  For, 
on  the  one  hand,  the  men  of  the  new  mind  de- 
fined in  the  Beatitudes  were  to  be  the  salt  that 
keeps  the  earth's  life  sound;  the  light  that  en- 
lightens the  world's  darkness;  the  leaven  to 
leaven  the  whole  lump  of  humanity;  the  seed 
of  the  new  living  kingdom  of  men.  This  is  the 
method  of  the  contagion  of  the  good  life,  of 
mental  and  spiritual  fellowship  among  men. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  salt  must  not  have  lost 
its  saltness ;  the  light  must  not  have  gone  out ; 
the  leaven  must  not  be  spoiled ;  the  seed  must 
not  be  a  dead  seed.  This  is  the  insistence  on 
the  steady  soundness  of  the  individual  life 
used,  on  "  mental  and  spiritual  independence  on 
the  part  of  the  individual." 


154  THE  NFAV   MIND 

It  is  in  exact  conformity  to  this  principle 
that  Christ  is  nowhere  satisfied  that  men  should 
take  truth  or  life  on  externally,  from  without, 
or  simply  on  authority, — even  His  own.  He 
knows  that,  in  very  deed,  truth  and  life  cannot 
so  come  to  any  one.  He  insists,  therefore, 
that  men  shall  see  for  themselves  and  decide 
for  themselves, — shall  come  into  insights,  de- 
cisions, convictions,  ideals,  hopes,  that  are 
truly  their  own ; — that  they  shall  have  person- 
ally shared  in  His  thought  and  life. 

This,  too,  is  the  method  by  zvhich  scientific 
discoveries  alone  get  their  full  fruition.  The 
original  discoverer,  for  example,  of  the  Roent- 
gen ray,  shares  his  discovery  with  all  other 
workers  in  his  field — the  method  of  fellozv- 
ship.  But  if  that  fellowship  is  to  produce  any 
results,  there  must  be  not  merely  routine  repe- 
tition of  the  discoverer's  work,  but  honest  in- 
dependent investigation,  alert  for  new  phe- 
nomena and  relations — the  method  of  inde- 
pendence. Only  so  will  there  be  real  verifica- 
tion, and  real  extension  of  the  original  dis- 
covery. 

It  is  in  the  same  fashion  that  there  comes 

that  personal  sharing  in  those  great  intellectual 

and  spiritual  achievements  of   the  race — the 

scientific  spirit  and  method,  the  historical  spirit, 

he  philosophic  mind,  aesthetic  appreciation,  the 


THE  EDUCATIONAL  CHALLENGE      155 

social  consciousness  with  its  great  ethical  im- 
plications ;  and  religious  discernment  and  com- 
mitment— in  which  we  saw  education  might  be 
said  to  consist. 

In  fact,  this  is  the  one  method  of  any  worth- 
while society  among  men.  The  individual 
needs  fellowship  with  others  at  every  point,  to 
supplement  the  meagerness  of  his  own  view- 
point, his  own  limited  experience.  On  the 
other  hand,  that  fellowship  will  have  nothing 
to  give  if  there  is  not  mental  and  spiritual  in- 
dependence on  the  part  of  the  individuals  com- 
posing the  fellowship.  It  is  hardly  open  to 
doubt,  I  suspect,  that  in  American  education 
we  have  not  sufficiently  stressed  the  independ- 
ence side. 

In  every  department  and  field  of  education, 
in  its  every  aspect,  this,  then,  is  the  essential 
method — mental  and  spiritual  fellowship  and 
mental  and  spiritual  independence.  It  will  help 
keep  sound  and  vital  everything  we  attempt  in 
education.  The  effectiveness  of  the  method 
lies  in  this,  that  it  admits  no  sham  or  pretenr.e 
at  any  point.     It  seeks  absolute  reality. 

2.  What  more  needs  to  be  said  concerning 
the  method  of  education  grows  right  out  of  the 
laws  of  human  nature.  The  pupil's  develop- 
ment must  be  in  line  zvith  the  fundamental  lazvs 
of  his  ozun  being,  and  his  education,  thus,  be  in 


156  THE  NEW   MIND 

truth  a  vital  process,  simply  a  kind  of  hasten- 
ing of  what  comes  from  normal  living  itself. 
For  education  ought  to  be  just  that — hastened 
living. 

What  is  most  essential  here  is  suggested  by 
what  I  have  elsewhere  called  the  four  great 
practical  inferences  from  modern  psychology: 
the  complexity  of  life;  the  unity  of  man's 
nature;  the  central  importance  of  will  and 
action ;  and  the  concreteness  of  the  real,  leading 
to  emphasis  on  the  personal.  From  the  first 
inference  comes  the  necessity  of  a  store  of  per- 
manent and  valuable  interests — one  of  the 
great  ends  of  education — and  of  realizing  that 
life  is  completely  interrelated  in  all  its  parts  and 
cannot  be  sharply  divided  off  nor  summed  up 
in  short  and  simple  formulas;  but  rather  has 
its  constant  paradoxes  which  we  cannot  safely 
ignore.  It  is  this  complexity  which  Lecky  has 
in  mind  in  his  Map  of  Life,  and  which  he 
calls  "  the  importance  of  compromise  in  prac- 
tical life."  It  is  this  upon  which  James  is  in- 
sisting also  when  he  calls  for  "  the  reinstate- 
ment of  the  vague  and  inarticulate  to  its  proper 
place  in  our  mental  life."  The  second  great 
inference  contends  that  we  must  keep  con- 
stantly in  mind  the  unity  of  man's  nature,  and 
recognizes  that  we  cannot  tear  ourselves  down 
at  one  point  and  leave  the  rest  of  our  life  un- 


THE  EDUCATIONAL  CHALLENGE      157 

affected.  It  demands  that  all  sides  of  man's 
nature  are  to  be  taken  into  account.  It  sug- 
gests, too,  the  importance  of  remembering  the 
mutual  influence  of  body  and  mind.  The  third 
great  inference,  the  central  importance  of  will 
and  action,  indicates  that  work — adequate  ex- 
pressive activity — is  one  of  the  greatest  means 
to  character,  influence  and  happiness  alike;  as 
the  mood  of  work — the  objective,  self-forget- 
ful mood — is  a  prime  condition  of  the  finest 
living.  The  fourth  inference  gives  a  like  em- 
phasis to  personal  association  as  the  greatest 
of  all  means  for  largeness  of  life,  and  to  re- 
spect for  personality,  including  self-respect  and 
respect  for  others,  as  the  supreme  condition. 

The  proper  fulfilluient  of  the  function  of  edu- 
cation, then,  requires  as  its  great  means,  first,  a 
life  sufficiently  complex  to  give  acquaintance 
with  the  great  fundamental  facts  of  the  world, 
and  to  call  out  the  entire  man ;  second,  the  com- 
pletest  possible  expressive  activity  on  the  part 
of  the  student;  and  third,  personal  association 
with  broad  and  wise  and  noble  lives.  And  the 
corresponding  spirit  demanded  in  education 
must  be,  first,  broad  and  catholic  in  both  senses 
— as  responding  to  a  wide  range  of  interests, 
and  looking  to  the  all-round  development  of  the 
individual;  second,  objective  rather  than  self- 
centcred  and  introspective;  and  third,  imbued 


158  THE  NEW   MIND 

with  the  fundamental  convictions  of  the  social 
consciousness.  These  are  always  the  greatest 
and  the  alone  indispensable  means  and  condi- 
tions in  a  complete  education,  and  they  contain 
in  themselves  the  great  sources  of  character, 
of  happiness,  and  of  social  efficiency.  The 
supreme  opportunity,  in  other  words,  that  edu- 
cation should  offer  is  opportunity  to  use  one's 
full  powers  in  a  wisely  chosen  complex  envi- 
ronment, in  association  with  the  best — and  all 
this  in  an  atmosphere,  catholic  in  its  interests, 
objective  in  spirit  and  method,  and  demo- 
cratic, unselfish  and  finely  reverent  in  its  per- 
sonal relations. 

Education  is  inevitably  impoverished  if  it 
fails  to  take  account  of  the  rich  complexity  of 
life,  of  the  intertwined  unity  of  man's  nature, 
of  the  demand  of  the  whole  nature  of  man  for 
expressive  activity,  of  the  fact  that  he  is  made, 
in  every  fiber  of  his  being,  body  and  soul,  for 
personal  relations.  Now  it  is  impossible  to 
believe,  In  view  of  such  a  revelation  of  the 
nature  of  men,  that  the  narrow  economic 
theory  of  human  progress  and  human  happi- 
ness that  makes  man's  one  great  desire  posses- 
sion of  things  is  justified.  No  wonder  that 
Russell's  Principles  of  Social  Reconstruction 
is  largely  a  rebellion  against  this  "  possessive  " 
theory  of  human  life.     No  wonder  that  he 


THE  EDUCATIONAL  CHALLENGE   1 59 

says:  "To  me,  the  chief  thing  to  be  learnt 
through  the  war  has  been  a  certain  view  of  the 
springs  of  human  action,  what  they  are,  and 
what  we  may  legitimately  hope  that  they  will 
become." 

VII 

Other  Needed  Bniphases  in  Bdiication 
Assuming,  now,  what  has  been  said  as  to  the 
power,  value,  end,  spirit,  and  method  of  edu- 
cation, what  other  emphases  are  needed  in  edu- 
cation to-day  ?     They  can  be  only  suggested. 

1.  A  crucial  time  of  testing  like  the  Great 
War  suggests  at  once  that  we  must  at  least 
make  certain  that  there  is  no  sham,  no  pretense, 
no  mere  going  through  the  motions  in  any  part 
of  our  education,  but  absolute  reality.  At  the 
very  best,  our  task  is  overwhelming.  There 
must  be  no  toy  tools. 

2.  In  the  second  place.  If  they  are  not  to 
play  with  their  task,  educational  institutions 
must  have  greatly  increased  resources,  espe- 
cially for  salaries  for  teachers.  The  present 
high  cost  of  living  only  accentuates  here  a 
constant  need.  For  of  the  teacher  it  must  be 
said,  not  only  that  the  labourer  is  worthy  of  his 
hire,  but  also  that  he  is  worthy  to  choose  for 
himself  his  own  lines  of  self-sacrifice,  and  not 
have  them  forced  upon  him.     In  a  democracy, 


l6o  THE  NEW  MIND 

especially,  it  is  also  desirable  that  besides  strong 
state  educational  institutions  there  should  be 
strong  independent  institutions  as  well,  to  in- 
sure variety  and  wholesome  rivalry,  and  also 
to  emphasize  the  ideal  aspects  of  education  in  a 
way  hardly  possible  to  the  state.  But  com- 
parison with  the  great  wealth  of  state-sup- 
ported institutions  becomes  daily  more  and 
more  difficult.  If  the  values  of  the  inde- 
pendent institutions  are  as  important  as  men 
have  professed  to  believe,  there  is  no  cheap 
and  easy  way  out.  Great  resources  must  be 
made  available.  This  is  a  part  of  the  signifi- 
cance of  the  educational  aspect  of  the  Inter- 
Church  World  Movement,  and  of  other  great 
educational  campaigns. 

In  the  meantime,  in  the  interests  of  honest 
service,  where  an  institution  finds  its  work 
growing  beyond  its  resources,  limitation  in  the 
number  of  students  may  well  be  suggested. 

3.  To  be  sure  that  our  education  is  fitting 
closely  into  the  needy  life  of  our  time,  it  is 
particularly  important  now  that  education 
should  furnish  in  a  kind  of  ideal  form  the  con- 
ditions of  a  full  normal  life,  in  line  with  the 
psychological  laws  already  considered. 

This  would  call  for  various  particulars,  in 
addition  to  the  larger  considerations  already 
covered: — the  physical  and  psychological  study 


THE  EDUCATIONAL  CHALLENGE      l6l 

of  each  pupil,  to  save  from  needless  handicaps 
and  to  give  a  guidance  scientifically  based;  an 
intelligent  comprehensive  physical  educational 
program,  with  emphasis  on  out-of-door  sports 
and  mass  athletics,  free  from  professionalism 
and  commercialism;  and,  fitting  into  this,  a 
constructive  recreation  program  as  a  legitimate 
and  needed  part  of  the  educational  process. 
War  statistics  at  this  point  are  impressive. 

The  vital  and  practical  relations  of  all  sub- 
jects taught  ought  also  to  be  brought  out,  even 
in  liberal  education;  not  primarily  at  all  for 
vocational  ends,  though  they  are  important,  but 
to  see  the  subject  in  its  setting  in  the  real 
world;  to  insure  a  better  grasp  of  it.  And  to 
induce  that  intensive  mastery  that  is  more 
likely  to  obtain  where  the  vocational  ends  are 
in  mind.  In  reference  to  all  practical  sub- 
jects, it  deserves  emphasis,  too,  that  it  is  not 
the  subject  of  a  course  which  determines 
whether  it  may  be  legitimately  included  in 
liberal  training,  but  the  way  in  which  it  is 
taught.  Even  the  most  practical  subject  can 
be  handled  in  such  broad,  scientific  and 
thoroughgoing  fashion  as  to  make  it  indubi- 
tably cultural  in  its  effect.  In  any  case,  the 
closer  relation  to  concrete  life  is  likely  to  help 
keep  our  education  real  at  every  point.  There 
is  often  an  artificialness  about  academic  life 


l62  THE   NEW   MIND 

that  is  a  direct  hindrance,  rather  than  help,  to  a 
genuine  education.  The  student's  common  de- 
sire to  separate  responsibihty  from  freedom  is 
an  ilkistration ;  as  is  also  his  frequent  conspicu- 
ous waste  of  opportunity.  It  is  cause  for  con- 
gratulation that  the  pressure  of  numbers  upon 
our  higher  institutions  of  learning  is  likely  to 
help  to  crowd  out  the  idler  from  the  privileges 
he  abuses. 

As  to  industrial  education,  there  is  real  force 
in  this  labour  declaration: 

It  is  also  important  that  the  industrial  educa- 
tion which  is  being  fostered  and  developed  should 
have  for  its  purpose  not  so  much  training  for 
efficiency  in  industry  as  training  for  life  in  an 
industrial  society.  A  full  understanding  must  be 
had  of  those  principles  and  activities  that  are  the 
foundation  of  all  productive  efforts.  Children 
should  not  only  become  familiar  with  tools  and 
materials,  but  they  should  also  receive  a  thorough 
knowledge  of  the  principles  of  human  control,  of 
force  and  matter  underlying  our  industrial  rela- 
tions and  sciences.  The  danger  that  certain 
commercial  and  industrial  interests  may  domi- 
nate the  character  of  education  must  be  averted 
by  insisting  that  the  workers  shall  have  equal 
representation  on  all  boards  of  education  or  com- 
mittees having  control  over  vocational  studies 
and  training. 

4.     The   severe   lessons   of   the   great   war 


THE  EDUCATIONAL  CHALLENGE   1 63 

press  upon  education,  too,  in  unexampled 
fashion  the  necessity  of  a  training  against  the 
materialistic  possessive  valuations  of  life,  with 
their  inevitable  tragedy  for  both  individual  and 
nation;  as  well  as  for  a  training  against  the 
deification  of  force  and  the  intoxication  of 
power,  and  the  consequent  desire  to  play  the 
tyrant.  The  very  spirit  of  genuine  education 
will  almost  unconsciously  guard  against  these 
perils. 

5.  Positively,  the  present  world  crisis  lays 
upon  education  the  task  of  training,  as  never 
before,  for  a  reverent  and  more  thoroughgoing 
democracy.  The  very  principle  of  reverence 
for  personality,  made  supreme  in  education, 
should  itself  insure  such  training,  for  it  makes 
the  school  itself  in  the  whole  spirit  of  it  a 
rational  ethical  democracy  in  which  it  can 
never  be  forgotten  that  self-government  neces- 
sarily involves  self-discipline. 

6.  It  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  every  one 
of  the  larger  aspects  of  the  war — as  we  have 
earlier  reviewed  them — makes  clear  the  neces- 
sity of  the  international  mind  for  every  nation 
and  for  every  citizen  of  the  nation  that  means 
to  count  intelligently  and  with  full  value  in 
the  life  of  the  world.  One  of  the  great  les- 
sons of  the  war,  for  example,  was  the  exten- 
sion  of  the   moral   law   from   individuals   to 


l64  THE  NEW  MIND 

nations.  That  means  that  selfish  isolation,  the 
refusal  to  take  other  nations  into  our  thoughts 
and  plans  and  cooperative  endeavour,  is  as 
damnable  and  damning  in  a  nation  as  in  an  in- 
dividual. The  education  to-day  that  does  not 
teach  men  v^^orld-vision,  world-feeling,  and  how 
to  think  in  world-terms,  is  recreant  to  the  trust 
given  it  in  this  age. 

Y.  Once  more,  the  comparative  failure  of 
our  education  on  the  ideal  side  makes  unmis- 
takable the  dire  need  of  definite,  discriminating 
hut  tolerant  moral  and  religious  education. 
We  must  learn,  as  never  before,  how  to  bring 
men  to  insights,  convictions,  ideals,  decisions 
and  hopes,  which  are  no  imitations  or  echoes  of 
others,  but  their  very  own.  I  need  not  say 
more  at  this  point.  Two  other  needed  educa- 
tional emphases  are  so  distinctly  moral  and 
religious  that,  with  this,  they  belong  rather  to 
the  discussion  of  the  moral  and  religious  chal- 
lenge of  the  new  age,  but  need  to  be  mentioned 
here,  as  most  important  educational  tasks  for 
this  generation. 

8.  That  our  civilization  was  so  near  to 
collapse  in  this  world-war  meant,  we  need  to 
remember,  that  the  spiritual  roots  of  our 
civilization  were  shallowly  grounded,  its  Chris- 
tianizing too  superficial.  We  cannot  run  away 
from  the  great  constructive  spiritual  task  thus 


THE  EDUCATIONAL  CHALLENGE   1 65 

arising.  All  the  ideal  interests  of  the  race  are 
at  stake.  And  a  great  share  of  this  responsi- 
bility rests  upon  education. 

9.  Once  more,  and  above  all,  it  concerns 
American  educators  that  they  should  not  fail 
to  meet  the  challenge  of  the  greatest  ideal 
achievement  of  the  zuar:  the  rare  idealism  with 
which  America  came  into  the  war;  the  sense 
of  the  supremacy  of  the  intangible  values ;  co- 
operation on  an  unheard-of  scale;  the  well- 
nigh  universal  spirit  of  sacrifice;  and  the  new 
revelation  of  common  men.  These,  as  we  saw, 
are  great  enduring  racial  achievements  and 
great  possible  permanent  spiritual  assets,  and 
therefore  a  perpetual  challenge  to  American 
educators  themselves  to  incarnate  these  values, 
and  to  help  all  American  citizens  to  carry  them 
over  into  the  time  and  tasks  of  peace.  For 
these  great  ideal  achievements  constitute  an 
enduring  ground  of  appeal  in  education,  in- 
estimably precious  and  powerful.  These  are 
our  permanent  trust  and  resource.  Has  edu- 
cation on  the  ideal  side  ever  had  a  greater 
opportunity  ? 


1 


i 


LECTURE  VI 

THE  NEW  MIND  :   THE  MORAL 
AND    RELIGIOUS    CHALLENGE 


LECTURE  VI 

THE  NEW  MIND:  THE  MORAL  AND 
RELIGIOUS  CHALLENGE 

AS  we  review  now  the  ground,  so  far 
covered,  we  are  driven  at  every  point 
to  a  steadily  increasing  sense  of  the 
necessity  of  the  help  which  only  morals  and 
religion  can  bring. 

This  crisis  in  the  world's  history  revealed  in 
the  war,  to  begin  with,  was  in  large  measure 
clearly  due  to  moral  and  religious  failure. 
Our  spirituality  had  been  too  shallow,  our 
Christianizing  of  civilization  too  superficial. 

The  perils  of  our  time — evil  inheritance 
from  the  war,  disillusionment,  reaction,  revolu- 
tion— could  be  fundamentally  met  only  by 
moral  and  religious  convictions,  commitment 
and  faith. 

The  values  of  the  new  age,  whether  in  cer- 
tain outstanding  characteristics  of  the  present 
world-order  or  in  the  moral  demonstrations  of 
the  war,  or  in  the  greatest  ideal  achievements 
169 


I70  THE  NEW  MIND 

of  the  war,  all  gave  evidence  of  the  M^orking 
of  moral  and  religious  forces. 

The  political,  economic  and  social  changes 
needed  for  progress  toward  the  goal  of  human 
history, — a  rational,  ethical  democracy,  a  so- 
ciety of  developed  independent  and  reverent 
personalities — themselves  require  an  unselfish- 
ness, a  reverence,  and  a  faith  in  spiritual  forces 
which  morals  and  religion  alone  can  give. 

As  for  the  educational  challenge  of  our  time, 
we  found  we  could  not  even  describe  a  true 
education  without  involving  moral  considera- 
tions at  every  turn, — moral  considerations,  not 
only  themselves  growing  out  of  the  teaching 
of  Jesus,  but  implying  essentially  religious 
faith  and  aims.  Our  whole  discussion,  thus, 
inevitably  flows  together  and  naturally  culmi- 
nates in  the  consideration  of  the  moral  and 
religious  challenge  of  the  new  age. 

I 

Grounds  of  Faith  and  Hope 
In  the  first  place,  in  these  dif^cult  days  of 
world  crisis  it  is  worth  while  bringing  together 
in  a  simple  survey  some  of  the  grounds  of 
faith  and  hope,  which  have  appeared  in  the 
course  of  our  discussion. 

1.     Here  we  may  be  thankful,  first  of  all, 


MORAL  AND   RELIGIOUS   CHALLENGE    17I 

that  men  are  compelled  to  face  the  facts,  for 
this  is  the  ground  of  all  scientific  control  of 
forces,  in  movement  toward  any  significant 
goal.  We  are  all  too  ready  to  ignore  uncom- 
fortable facts.  It  is  well  that  now  we  cannot 
wholly  evade  them. 

2.  We  may  count  it  a  distinct  gain,  too, 
that  men  have  been  brought  to  a  more  chas- 
tened and  humble  mood  in  facing  the  tasks  of 
world-reconstruction.  For  the  humble  open 
mind  will  succeed  where  conceit  will  fail.  The 
most  difficult  part  of  these  reconstruction  tasks, 
moreover,  involves  a  delicacy  of  insight,  of 
feeling,  of  sympathy,  that  no  cock-sure  rule  of 
thumb  or  jaunty  confidence  in  inevitable  prog- 
ress can  compass. 

3.  We  have  reason  to  be  glad,  indeed,  that 
the  crisis  was  not  longer  delayed ;  that  zveak- 
nesscs — personal,  class,  national  and  interna- 
tional— have  been  laid  bare  in  this  earthquake 
shock,  and  may  now  be  rooted  out,  as  a  help 
to  that  neiv  mind  without  which  the  better 
world  of  our  dreams  cannot  come. 

4.  We  may  gain  fresh  assurance,  too,  from 
the  favouring  conditions  which  many  of  the 
trends  of  our  time  afford  for  the  achievement 
of  great  new  social  goals  for  humanity:  the 
irrefutable  demonstration  of  the  solidarity  of 
the  world,  which  the  war  has  brought,   that 


172  THE  NEW   MIND 

forces  now  a  world-life  upon  us;  the  pro- 
dig-iously  increased  resources  of  power  and 
wealth  and  knowledge  made  available  through 
modern  science  for  the  forces  of  righteous- 
ness, if  they  will  have  them;  the  forced  scien- 
tific cooperation  and  organization  everywhere 
affecting  earth's  life;  the  world-wide  trend  to- 
ward democracy,  and  toward  universal  educa- 
tion with  its  vast  possibilities;  the  beginnings 
at  least  of  the  establishment  of  a  League  of 
Nations — that  may  yet  prove  the  greatest 
single  outcome  of  the  war;  the  steadily  grow- 
ing internationalism  discoverable  in  all  realms 
of  human  life,  that  plays  right  into  that  true 
brotherhood  of  the  peoples  for  which  men 
must  look ;  and  the  growing  evidence  that  men 
are  setting  larger  and  more  significant  and 
worthy  goals  for  social  progress,  in  harmony 
with  moral  and  religious  ideals.  These  all 
suggest  the  possibility  of  an  alliance  of  great 
world  forces  and  trends  that  could  be  mightily 
used  for  setting  humanity  forward.  They  give 
new  solid  ground  for  faith  and  hope. 

5.  One's  faith  may  be  steadied  and  under- 
girded,  too,  as  he  recalls  the  repeated  moral 
dcmonstratiojis  of  the  zvar — of  the  power  of 
the  invisible  things  of  character  and  belief;  of 
the  conviction  that  there  was  inescapable  law 
in  the  spiritual  world ;  and  of  the  mighty  grip 


MORAL  AND   RELIGIOUS   CHALLENGE    1 73 

of  the  laws  of  God  upon  nations  as  well  as 
upon  individuals.  It  is  in  this  inviolable  moral 
world  that  righteous  goals  are  to  be  wrought 
out.  God  Himself  is  in  these  laws  of  His  and 
will  work  through  them. 

6.  And  when  we  ponder  those  greatest 
ideal  achievements  of  the  war — the  glorious 
idealism  with  which  America  came  into  the 
war;  the  deepening  sense  for  millions  of  men 
of  the  supremacy  of  the  intangible  unseen 
values;  the  unexampled  extent  to  which  men 
voluntarily  carried  their  cooperation  for  a 
great  cause;  the  demonstration,  on  a  world 
scale,  of  the  capacity  of  men  for  sacrifice ;  and 
the  resulting  inspiring  new  revelation  of  com- 
mon men,  with  its  new  basis  for  democracy — 
we  must  believe  that,  in  the  very  midst  of  an 
unexampled  world-catastrophe,  God  Himself 
was  mightily  at  work  revealing  Himself  in  and 
through  men,  and  revealing  the  divine  in  men 
to  themselves  and  to  others.  For  these  ideal 
achievements  of  the  war  in  themselves  make  a 
wonderful  apocalypse.  How  shall  we  not  be- 
lieve and  hope? 

T.  Our  study,  too,  of  the  political,  economic 
and  social  changes  demanded  for  the  new  age 
makes  it  clear  that  nowhere  need  we  expect 
mere  blind  reaction  to  attain  anything  more 
than  a  purely  temporary  success. 


174  THE  NEW   MIND 

In  the  political  sphere,  the  trend  toward 
democracy  is  unmistakable  and  growing  in 
power.  We  need  not  despair  even  of  the 
League  of  Nations.  In  the  rcahn  of  economics, 
while  many  still  cannot  see  that  a  new  day  has 
dawned,  the  multitude  of  experiments  in  the 
industries,  all  seeking  a  larger  measure  of 
justice  for  the  working  man,  not  only  make 
general  reaction  impossible,  but  bear  witness 
to  the  working  of  a  sense  of  justice  that  may 
be  in  a  positive  way  revolutionary.  And  more 
radical  elements  in  economic  programs  are 
likely  to  compel  us  all  squarely  to  face  the 
question,  in  the  interests  of  all  the  people,  of 
the  permanence  of  the  present  economic  sys- 
tem. 

In  the  whole  field  of  comprehensive  social 
programs,  the  greatest  encouragement  lies  in 
the  fact  that  thoughtful  men  ever3^where  are 
occupying  themselves  with  the  problem  of  the 
social  order  and  of  the  social  goal,  and  that 
the  modern  programs  generally  show  a  much 
greater  sensitiveness  to  the  deep  significance 
of  the  ideal  elements  in  the  social  order.  Men 
are  not  to  be  satisfied  simply  with  things.  And 
this  makes  the  problem  of  the  true  social  order 
much  more  than  the  problem  of  the  triumph 
of  one  class.  It  looks  for  emancipation  for 
all    the    people    in    a    community    goal    that 


MORAL  AND  RELIGIOUS   CHALLENGE     1 75 

shall  make  all  members  one  of  another   for 
good. 

8.  Nor  does  it  need  to  be  argued  that 
education  has  great  and  indispensable  help  to 
give  to  the  moral  and  religious  forces,  and  so 
affords  most  significant  grounds  for  faith  and 
hope.  The  power  and  value  of  education  we 
have  seen,  and  the  vital  contribution  it  has  to 
make  at  its  best  to  the  ideal  interests,  in  its 
end  and  spirit  and  method.  For,  when  all  is 
said,  they  are  the  end  and  spirit  and  method  of 
human  life  itself.  But  we  may  well  note  here 
the  specific  aid  it  has  to  give  in  its  content:  its 
enlightenment  as  to  the  laws  of  that  whole 
world  of  matter  and  spirit  in  which  our  ideals 
are  to  be  wrought  out;  the  scientific  method 
itself  in  the  survey  of  a  great  problem;  and 
the  ideal  meaning  of  the  very  substance  of 
education.  Every  one  of  the  great  elements 
in  modern  education  which  we  noted — the 
scientific  spirit  and  method,  the  historical 
spirit,  the  philosophic  mind,  aesthetic  apprecia- 
tion, the  social  consciousness  with  its  great 
ethical  implications,  and  religious  discernment 
and  commitment — all  these  have  moral  and 
even  religious  implications  and  bearings. 

Personally  to  share  In  any  one  of  these 
great  racial  achievements  requires  a  spirit 
which  is  closely  akin  at  least  to  the  demands 


176  THE  NEW  MIND 

of  the  moral  and  religious.  For  example,  there 
is  hardly  a  closer  historical  parallel  to  the 
demand  for  the  scientific  spirit — with  its  in- 
sistence that  a  man  should  see  straight,  report 
exactly,  and  give  an  absolutely  honest  reaction 
upon  the  situation  in  which  he  is  placed — than 
in  Jesus'  demand  for  utter  inner  integrity  on 
the  part  of  His  disciples,  with  His  constant 
direct  appeal  to  their  reason  and  conscience. 
"  Why  even  of  yourselves  judge  ye  not  what 
is  right  ?  " 

Education,  therefore,  fits  right  Into  the 
moral  and  religious  program,  and  strengthens 
profoundly  our  faith  and  hope  in  the  midst  of 
these  troul^lous  times.  It  has  solid  and  funda- 
mental help  to  give,  for  its  power  is  knit  up 
with  the  very  laws  of  the  universe  and  of  the 
nature  of  man. 

9.  Once  more,  it  is  a  fresh  ground  for 
faith  and  hope  that  men  have  learned  through 
the  war  to  undertake  great  tasks,  and  that  they 
are  now  actually  daring  to  attempt  greater 
goals  than  they  would  have  dreamed  possible 
before  the  war.  Of  this  the  Inter-Church 
World  Movement  is  the  most  notable,  but  by 
no  means  the  only,  example.  It  is  a  great 
and  inspiring  thing  that  the  moral  and  re- 
ligious forces  of  the  country  should  be  at- 
tempting   world-surveys,     and    great-hearted 


MORAL  AND   RELIGIOUS  CHALLENGE    1 77 

world-aims.  Ultimately  this  must  mean  a 
steadily  clearing  vision  of  intcr-locking  goals — 
personal  and  social,  class  and  class,  national 
and  international.  For  the  race  is  one,  and  the 
world  is  one,  and  the  kingdom  of  the  spirit, 
that  is  to  be,  is  one.  We  can  dare  great  things 
in  line  with  the  eternal  purposes  of  God. 
Certainly  confident  faith  and  hope  are  within 
our  reach. 

II 

The  Basic  Reality  of  Morals  and  Religion 
The  survey  of  the  grounds  of  faith  and 
hope  in  the  present  world-situation — with  all 
its  crisis  and  chaos  and  unwonted  perils — both 
suggests  and  illustrates  the  basic  reality  of 
morals  and  religion.  It  reveals,  in  days  more 
critical  perhaps  than  humanity  has  ever  before 
known,  how  inevitable,  how  inescapable,  the 
claims  of  the  moral  and  religious  life  are. 
We  have  found  that  we  cannot  go  to  the 
bottom  of  any  situation  or  question  of  these 
troublous  days  and  not  find  ourselves  face  to 
face  not  only  with  some  moral  and  religious 
demand,  but,  not  less,  with  some  inspiring  hint 
of  a  solidly  grounded  faith  and  hope.  It  is 
also  only  through  ethical  and  religious  faith 
that  we  can  bring  fundamental  unity  and  hope 
into  our  world-view  at  all. 


178  THE  NEW   MIND 

It  does  not  belong  to  our  present  task  to 
suggest  the  more  general  grounds  for  faith  in 
the  basic  reality  of  morals  and  religion;  nor 
is  that  necessary.  Religion  never  had  less  need 
to  apologize  for  its  existence.  It  was  not  by 
accident  that  one  of  two  great  poems  sent  out 
to  Chaplains  of  the  American  Army  over-seas 
and  to  religious  work  secretaries  of  the  Y.  M. 
C.  A.,  by  the  Religious  Work  Department  of 
that  organization  was  Francis  Thompson's 
The  Hound  of  Heaven,  with  its  song  of  the 
pursuant  inescapable  love  of  God. 

I  fled  Him,  down  the  nights  and  down  the  days ; 

I  fled  Him,  down  the  arches  of  the  years ; 
I  fled  Him,  down  the  labyrinthine  ways 

Of  my  own  mind;  and  in  the  mist  of  tears 
I  hid  from  Him,  and  under  running  laughter. 
Up  vistaed  hopes,  I  sped; 
And  shot,  precipitated, 
Adown  Titanic  glooms  of  chasmed  fears, 

From  those  strong  Feet  that  followed,  followed 
after. 

But  with  unhurrying  chase, 

And  unperturbed  pace. 
Deliberate  speed,  majestic  instancy, 

They  beat — and  a  Voice  beat 

More  instant  than  the  Feet — 
"  All  things  betray  thee,  who  betrayest  Me." 

4(  «  *  4:  4:  ♦  4c 


MORAL  AND   RELIGIOUS   CHALLENGE    1 79 

Ah,  fondest,  blindest,  weakest, 
I  am  He  Whom  thou  seekest ! 
Thou  dravest  love  from  thee,  who  dravest  Me." 


Men  are  catching  this  vision  of  Francis 
Thompson's,  we  may  believe,  and  never  before 
as  now. 

Ill 

The  Inescapable  Christ 

Nor  is  it  only  the  general  claim  of  morals 
and  religion  which  our  age  in  its  upheaval  and 
need  is  bringing  home  to  men.  It  is  Christ 
Himself  whom  men  more  and  more  find  in- 
escapable. The  whole  world-situation  puts  us 
squarely  face  to  face  wath  Him — simply  and 
straightly,  because  He  has  discerned  the  laws 
of  the  moral  universe  as  no  other  has ;  and  be- 
cause, above  all  others,  He  has  incarnated  what 
He  taught,  so  that  He  becomes  literally  the 
Master  of  Life,  supreme  in  the  Bible  as  well  as 
out  of  the  Bible.  In  all  the  higher  ranges  of 
their  life  many  who  do  not  call  themselves  by 
His  name  at  all,  still  in  very  deed  live  by  Him — 
by  His  insights,  His  ideals,  His  hopes.  So  es- 
sential is  He  to  the  life  of  the  spirit. 

For  example,  it  is  His  all-embracing  law  of 
love — endless  and  self-giving  and  holding  for 
both    God    and    man — which    we    find    alone 


l8o  THE   NEW   MIND 

bringing  unity  into  the  world  of  the  spirit, 
whether  we  are  thinking  of  the  individual  or 
of  the  nation  or  of  the  race.  It  is  in  a  truly 
unselfish  love  that  His  fundamental  paradox — 
finding  one's  life  by  losing  it — is  most  clearly 
revealed.  And  that  paradox  the  world  has 
been  verifying  as  never  before,  for  millions 
have  found  the  way  of  sacrifice,  of  self-giving, 
the  way  of  liberty  and  life. 

It  is  His  supreme  principle  of  reverence  for 
the  person,  to  be  shown  in  every  personal  rela- 
tion, which  we  feel  compelled  to  put  at  the  base 
both  of  our  education  and  of  our  civilization, 
as  the  essential  spirit  of  both. 

It  is  His  paradoxical  method  of  fellowship 
and  independence  which  we  are  driven  to  apply 
as  alone  adequate,  whether  in  the  education  and 
progress  of  the  schools  or  of  life. 

It  is  the  end  He  set  before  His  disciples, — the 
kind  of  person  and  the  kind  of  society  which 
He  portrayed — a  brotherhood  of  reverent  per- 
sons— which  we  too,  the  longer  we  study  our 
problem,  feel  constrained  to  make  the  goal  of 
the  race  and  of  human  history. 

It  is  the  nezu  mind,  which  He  so  accurately 
described  in  the  Beatitudes — the  showing  of 
the  eight  facets  of  the  jewel  of  a  true  love — as 
necessary  to  the  world-crisis  of  His  time,  which 
we  must  recognize  as  fundamentally  needed. 


MORAL  AND   RELIGIOUS   CHALLENGE    l8l 

quality  by  quality,  for  the  world-crisis  of  our 
own  day. 

For  this  is  no  time  for  half-way  measures  or 
for  shallow  remedies.  Political  and  economic 
prescriptions — much  as  they  are  needed — will 
not  suffice.  There  can  be  no  light  and  easy 
healing  of  the  hurt  of  the  peoples  in  this  time 
of  a  world  sick  unto  death.  The  conditions 
of  enduring  national  greatness  are  moral — the 
war  has  proved  it.  The  absolute  essentials  of 
a  world  of  peace  and  good-will  are  spiritual, 
as  those  who  are  willing  to  go  to  the  bottom 
of  the  world's  need  to-day  clearly  see. 

This  is  the  significance  of  one  of  the  most 
remarkable  editorials  of  the  war  on  "  The 
Greatest  of  These,"  [New  Republic,  December 
21,  1918]  by  one  of  the  most  far-sighted  and 
radical  of  American  editors,  not  given  over- 
much to  emphasize  upon  the  moral  and  relig- 
ious. In  the  course  of  that  editorial  he  sets 
forth  the  dire  need,  the  only  adequate  remedy, 
and  its  endless  justification: 

The  starvation,  the  anarchy,  and  the  bank- 
ruptcy which  are  now  threatening  Europe  may  in 
the  end  frustrate  and  sterilize  more  human  lives, 
arouse  more  enduring  hatreds,  work  results  more 
menacing  to  the  future  of  civilization  than  war 
itself.  Although  the  fighting  is  over,  there  is  no 
peace  in  the  world,  little  confidence  in  one  an- 


1 82  THE   NEW   MIND 

other  or  in  the  future,  Httle  common  understand- 
ing and  good-will.     .     .     . 

Christians  who  have  lifted  the  veil  and  looked 
into  the  face  of  Christ  must  believe  that  the  limi- 
tation of  Christ  is  precisely  and  entirely  what  the 
Christian  peoples  need  to  deliver  them  from  the 
bondage  of  their  bankrupt  social  economy,  from 
the  least  tolerable  of  their  present  sufferings  and 
from  the  dread  of  impending  calamity.     .     .     . 

There  is  nothing  in  modern  social  knowledge 
which  discourages  us  from  seeking  individual 
and  social  deliverance  through  the  limitation  of 
Christ.  On  the  contrary,  modern  psychology, 
modern  penology,  and  modern  education  all 
recommend  a  way  of  enhancing  human  life  which 
seeks  to  release  men  and  women  from  fears,  ha- 
treds, suspicions,  greeds,  and  debts  to  their  own 
past. 

To  the  paramount  necessity  of  applying  the 
mind  and  spirit  of  Christ  to  the  whole  vast 
problem  of  the  world's  need — this  it  Is,  curi- 
ously enough,  to  which  these  terrible  years  of 
war  have  driven  us.     As  another  has  said: 


There  are  many  signs  that  the  time  has  come, 
and  that  men  see  that  the  time  has  come,  to  make 
the  experiment  of  applied  Christianity  on  a  scale 
as  large  as  the  world. 

For  nations  and  races  as  well  as  for  individuals, 


MORAL  AND   RELIGIOUS   CHALLENGE    1 83 

the  way  of  unselfish  service  and  sacrifice  is  the 
way  of  freedom  and  peace  and  power. 


IV 
Christian  World  Civilization 

Our  goal  thus  is  a  definitely  Christian  world- 
civilization.  Nothing  less  will  suffice.  What 
should  it  mean? 

1.  To  that  end  we  are  to  be  sure,  first  of 
all,  that  our  Christianity  is  the  Christianity  of 
Christ  Himself,  measuring  up  both  to  His 
ideals  and  to  His  consciousness  of  Himself  and 
of  His  mission.  One  of  the  things  that  the  war 
was  surely  doing,  for  those  who  could  see,  was 
sifting  out  all  those  types  of  Christianity  which 
did  not  truly  reflect  Christ:  a  Christianity 
primarily  theological,  a  Christianity  primarily 
emotional,  a  Christianity  primarily  ceremonial, 
a  Christianity  that  adopts  God  as  a  kind  of 
national  or  racial  perquisite,  and  an  Old  Testa- 
ment kind  of  Christianity.  All  these  alike 
failed  to  stand  the  crucial  test  of  this  world 
crisis.  All  these  kinds  of  Christianity  were 
readily  harmonized  in  all  the  belligerent  na- 
tions in  this  war  with  a  bitterness  and  hatred 
and  ferocity  utterly  unchristlike. 

Christ's  Christianity  was  of  no  two-sided 
order — one  standard  for  individuals,  another 


184  THE  NEW  MIND 

for  states;  or  one  kind  of  Christianity  for  us 
and  another  kind  of  Christianity  for  the  classes 
or  races  we  thought  below  us.  His  Christian- 
ity is  a  Christianity  of  honesty  and  love,  of 
utter  inner  integrity  and  genuine  tireless  un- 
selfish good-will.  As  one  said  of  Julian  Gren- 
fell:  "  God,  it  is  good  to  think  of  a  soul  so 
wholly  devoid  of  pettiness  and  humbug,  the 
cynicism  and  dishonesty  of  so  much  that  we 
see."  Surely  the  fires  of  the  war  should  have 
done  something  to  burn  out  the  dross  in  our 
religious  lives. 

Above  all,  it  should  be  plain  that  Christ 
knows  no  negative  kind  of  Christianity.  The 
very  essence  of  religion  for  Him  is  a  personal 
sharing  in  the  Father's  tireless  self-giving  love 
in  His  eternal  purposes  of  good,  identifying  our 
wills  with  His  will,  as  we  take  on  His  purposing 
of  all  the  great  positive  values  of  the  kingdom 
of  God.  To  that  mighty  loving  will  of  God 
we  do  not  merely  submit;  we  rejoice  in  it,  and 
take  it  on  as  our  own,  and  make  its  triumph 
our  triumph.  All  the  greatest  goals  of  the 
great  causes  and  the  great  ideals  are  here  en- 
closed. 

2.  We  cannot  live  up  to  this  Christianity  of 
Christ  and  His  world-view  and  not  definitely 
seek  a  civilization  spiritually  based.  The  war 
held  no  more  solemn  warning  than  that  con- 


MORAL  AND   RELIGIOUS  CHALLENGE    1 85 

tained  in  the  fact  that  an  essentially  anti-Chris- 
tian interpretation  of  civilization  and  national 
life  came  frightfully  near  to  prevailing, — to 
strangling  what  the  world  had  of  a  Christian 
civilization.  That  meant,  as  we  have  seen, 
that  our  Christianizing  of  civilization  at  its 
best  had  been  too  superficial,  that  it  had  not 
premeated  to  the  core  of  our  civilization;  that 
we  had  had  a  pagan  standard  for  nations  side 
by  side  with  a  Christian  standard  for  individ- 
uals. And  just  so  far  as  the  old  selfish  na- 
tional diplomacy  and  intrigue  are  still  going 
on,  we  are  still  a  house  divided  against  itself. 
There  is  no  saving  this  world  hy  any  process 
that  does  not  recogni::e  one  moral  law,  one 
Christian  spirit,  as  binding  upon  our  whole 
civilization  from  top  to  bottom. 

The  debt  of  Western  civilization  to  Chris- 
tianity is  already  beyond  estimate,  as  Canon 
Holland  testifies: 

Western  civilization  is  a  body  with  a  soul.  It 
depends  on  the  active  energy  of  this  animating 
consciousness.  And,  when  you  come  to  look  into 
this  determining  conscience,  you  cannot  but  rec- 
ognize that  it  is  the  moral  deposit  of  historic 
Christianity.  Its  growth,  its  structure,  its  em- 
phasis, its  proportions,  are  the  resuh  of  a  pro- 
longed Christian  effort.  It  may  but  imperfectly 
represent  the  full  Christian  ideal,  but  it  is  never- 


l86  THE  NEW  MIND 

theless  inexplicable  without  presupposing  it.  It 
depends  on  Christian  values,  it  accepts  Christian 
standards,  it  has  been  bred  in  a  Christian  atmos- 
phere, it  follows  from  Christian  premises.  It  is 
soaked  through  and  through  with  Christian  be- 
liefs. Its  sensitiveness  to  the  rights  of  the  in- 
dividual man,  to  the  position  of  woman,  to  the 
claims  of  purity  and  truth,  to  the  calls  for  service 
and  self-sacrifice,  have  their  spring  and  source  in 
the  mind  of  Christ,  in  the  creed  of  the  Incarna- 
tion. 

It  is  only  by  giving  full  right  of  way  at  every 
point  to  this  permeating  spirit  of  Christianity 
that  a  Christian  civilization  can  be  finally  tri- 
umphant. 

3.  And,  above  all,  we  may  not  forget  that 
the  task  Christ  set  His  disciples  was  not  run- 
ning away  from  the  world  but  conquering  the 
world;  not  merely  through  missionary  activity, 
but  through  the  mastery  by  the  Christian  spirit 
of  all  the  forces  and  resources  and  methods 
and  institutions  and  aims  of  the  world-life. 
There  is  a  new  attitude  required  here.  The 
war  proved  that  the  world-life  was  so  emphat- 
ically one  that  you  could  not  leave  a  half  of  it 
pagan  and  Christianize  the  remainder.  The 
Christian  forces,  therefore,  may  not  run  away 
from  the  full  task  of  Christianizing  our  entire 
civilization.  Else  the  Kingdom  of  God  per- 
ishes. 


MORAL  AND   RELIGIOUS   CHALLENGE    187 

But  history  shows  that  the  greatest  faikire 
of  the  Christian  institutions  and  forces  has 
been,  not  in  pioneer  and  simple  conditions,  but 
rather  in  advanced  and  complex  situations, 
where  resources  were  abundant.  There  has 
been  a  tendency  to  flee  from  the  world,  rather 
than  to  conquer  the  world.  The  challenge, 
therefore,  which  the  present  world-crisis  brings 
to  the  Christian  forces,  is  a  challenge  definitely 
to  break  that  tendency, — to  break  the  whole 
negative  relation  to  the  world,  and  to  seek  in- 
stead a  positive  world  conquest  in  learning  to 
be  in  the  world  but  not  of  the  world,  to  use  the 
world  as  not  abusing  it.  The  Christian  forces 
are  bound  to  "  overcome  the  world,"  bound  to 
bind  all  its  resources  of  wealth  and  power  and 
knowledge  and  beauty  to  the  chariot  of  the  all- 
embracing  and  ongoing  purposes  of  God. 
Our  educational  institutions,  our  welfare 
agencies,  and  our  churches  must  all  alike  learn 
to  master  great  material  resources  and  not  be 
mastered  by  them.  They  must  cherish  unceas- 
ingly great  unselfish  community  goals. 

4.  There  is  no  more  signal  way.  b\  which 
this  positive  Christian  conquest  of  the  world 
can  be  set  forward  just  now,  than  by  making 
sure  that  we  carry  over  into  the  tasks  of  peace 
those  greatest  ideal  achievements  of  tJie  war, 
of  which  I  would  once  more  remind  you — the 


1 88  THE  NEW  MIND 

rare  idealism  with  which  America  came  into 
the  war;  the  deepening  sense  for  milhons  of 
men  of  the  supremacy  of  the  intangible  values; 
the  unexampled  extent  to  which  men  volun- 
tarily carried  their  cooperation  for  a  great 
cause;  the  demonstration  on  a  world  scale  of 
the  capacity  of  men  for  sacrifice;  and  the  re- 
sulting new  revelation  of  common  men,  with 
its  new  basis  for  democracy. 

We  have  seen  how  significant  it  was  that  in 
every  one  of  these  values  we  had  a  great  racial 
achievement,  and  a  great  possible  Christian 
asset, — a  permanent  ground  of  powerful  ap- 
peal. But  more  than  this  is  true.  Every  one 
of  these  great  achievements  is  itself  a  challenge 
to  individuals,  to  communities,  to  institutions, 
to  classes,  to  the  whole  nation,  to  preserve  it, 
to  apply  it,  to  fulfill  it.  For  spiritual  values 
like  these  can  truly  go  on  only  as  they  are  in- 
carnated in  human  lives.  Moral  and  religious 
education  has  here,  as  we  have  seen,  a  supreme 
opportunity. 

These  ideal  achievements  all  involve  certain 
definite  practical  goals.  They  mean,  in  the 
first  place,  that  there  is  just  one  way  in  which 
America  can  be  true  to  her  own  highest  na- 
tional achievement,  and  that  is  by  "  carrying 
on"  along  the  line  of  that  achievement  now; 
by  showing  now  a  like  idealism,  a  like  unself- 


MORAL  AND   RELIGIOUS   CHALLENGE    1 89 

ishness,  a  like  willingness  to  take  her  full  share 
of  world  responsibility.  The  natural  way  to 
have  done  all  this  was  to  have  kept  a  united 
nation  freed  from  selfish  partisanship;  to  have 
taken  our  place  in  the  League  of  Nations ;  and 
to  have  been  willing  to  take  on  a  large  and  sig- 
nificant mandate,  for  example,  in  the  Near 
East.  It  was  possible  for  us,  as  the  one  great 
power  territorially  disinterested,  to  do  there 
what  no  other  nation  could  do.  We  could 
have  cleared  up  one  of  the  greatest  plague  spoLs 
of  the  world. 

And  even  now  it  is  impossible  to  believe  that 
America  can  remain  contented  to  turn  her  back 
upon  starving  humanity.  The  appeal  of  the 
facts,  as  Mr,  Henry  P.  Davison  of  the  Red 
Cross  puts  it,  I  cannot  forbear  quoting.  This 
appeal  of  the  facts  must  surely  reach  the  con- 
science of  the  American  people: 

We  are  going  to  find  out  that  we  can  no  more 
escape  the  influence  of  the  European  situation 
of  to-day  than  we  were  able  to  escape  the  war 
itself.  You  cannot  have  one-half  of  the  world 
starving  and  the  other  half  eating.  We  must  help 
put  Europe  on  its  feet  or  we  must  participate  in 
Europe's  misery.  Let  it  be  admitted,  if  you  will, 
that  neither  Wilson  nor  Roosevelt  have  had  the 
right  to  speak  for  the  idealism  of  America  [in 
pledging  our  sustained  friendship  and  help] ;  it 


I90  THE  NEW   MIND 

Still  remains  true  that  a  man  is  lying  wounded 
by  the  roadside.  He  is  stripped  of  his  raiment, 
he  is  half  dead,  and  America  (rich  and  pros- 
perous) is  passing  by  on  the  other  side.  .  .  . 
Whatever  the  developments  were  later  and  what- 
ever the  merits  or  the  reasons,  do  not  forget  that 
to  Europe  we  are  all-important  and  gave  them 
every  reason  to  believe  that  we  were  there  and 
there  to  stick  and  that  now  we  seem  to  have 
turned  our  backs.  ...  I  know  that  if  our 
people  had  a  full  realization  of  the  situation  we 
would  at  once  say  to  our  government : 

Quite  irrespective  of  any  obligation,  quite  ir- 
respective of  the  fact  that  we  find  ourselves  the 
only  country  possessed  of  many  of  the  supplies 
which  Europe  needs  and  which  cannot  be  pur- 
chased  or  given  in  sufficient  volume  on  credit ; 
quite  irrespective  of  our  own  problems  at  home 
(and  put  it  all,  if  you  please,  upon  a  commercial 
basis),  we  ask  you  to  arrange  at  once  to  place 
within  the  reach  of  those  peoples  that  which  they 
need  to  save  them  and  start  them  on  their  way 
to  recover\^  We  ask  you  to  do  this  under  con- 
ditions and  upon  terms  which  will  best  insure  the 
success  of  the  undertaking.  But  we  ask  you  to 
do  it.  One  of  the  conditions  we  would  impose 
would  be  that  politics  should  be  eliminated  from 
the  handling  of  this  task  both  in  this  country  and 
in  Europe,  and  that  the  financial  terms  should 
be  such  as  not  to  work  a  hardship  which  would 
defeat  its  own  purpose. 

I  believe  that  any  conditions  dictated  by  justice 


MORAL  AND   RELIGIOUS  CHALLENGE    I91 

and  common  sense  would  be  unanimously  ac- 
cepted, and  I  also  believe  that  such  a  step  taken 
by  our  government  would  not  only  be  hailed  with 
joyous  hope  on  the  part  of  the  nations  of  the 
world,  but  that  most  cordial  and  immediate  co- 
operation would  be  forthcoming  from  Great 
Britain,  Holland,  the  Scandinavian  countries, 
Spain,  Japan  and  France,  Italy  and  Belgium  to 
the  best  of  their  ability,  and  perhaps  other  coun- 
tries as  well.     [The  Survey,  April  24,  1920.] 

For  America  to  do  less  than  this  is  to  repu- 
diate indeed  that  rare  idealism  with  which  she 
came  into  the  war. 

These  greatest  ideal  achievements  mean, 
also,  that  the  forces  of  righteousness  can  count 
on  the  permanent  poivcr  of  the  ideal  sacrificial 
appeal  to  men;  that  they  are  not,  therefore,  to 
make  the  mistake  of  pitching  their  appeal  too 
low ;  that,  on  the  contrary,  they  are  to  see  that 
what  men  want  from  the  ideal  forces,  from  the 
Christian  churches,  is  not  easy  terms  or  "sissy  " 
tasks,  but  a  great  worth-while  program  and  a 
man's  job. 

Men  know,  too,  that  this  cannot  be  without 
cooperation  of  a  kind  and  on  a  scale  that  rivals 
the  marvellous  cooperation  of  the  war.  The 
indubitable  fact,  moreover,  that  spiritual  values 
are  always  personal  suggests  that  the  churches 
themselves  must  never   forget  that  even  the 


192  THE  NEW   MIND 

churches,  as  institutions,  are  means,  not  ends; 
that  they  are  made  for  the  highest  service  of 
men,  not  men  for  them ;  that  they  are  justified 
only  by  their  fruit  in  personal  lives;  and 
that  they  should  in  themselves  illustrate  that 
brotherhood  of  free  and  reverent  personalities 
which  is  the  goal  of  human  progress. 


Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America. 


I 


TJMv..tiSlTy  of  CALIFORNIA 

AT 

LOS  ANGELES 

LIBRARY 


AA    001  114  658    6 


r523 

K58n 


